Mohammed Z. Rahman studied anthropology, only to find it inadequate when turned towards their own layered subjectivity as a queer, working-class British Bangladeshi. Painting emerged as a way to express what language could no longer hold. His art – which extends to sculptures, drawings, and zines – involves dreamscapes, historical events and folk tales, situating the individual and intimate in dialogue with social and political contexts.
The installation Rolling Heart gathers recent works in an alternative, open-framed display structure of simple pine, where paintings face inwards and outwards, revealing images and notes on their reverse, and shipping crates are repurposed as both painting surface and visitor seating. The intimately scaled Lovers’ Vigil (2024) is a series of sixty-four matchbox paintings that depict flowers, candles and other objects associated with heartbreak. In Memento Vivere (2024), a crate is painted to resemble a condom package that celebrates the workers, carers, lovers and agitators of the AIDS epidemic. The paintings on board in Emergency Then (2024) are inspired by events that inscribe fire as both agent of loss and signifier of social upheaval.
Rahman’s work moves fluidly between private and collective emotions. From the tender worlds of individual heartbreak to the broader ruptures of political unrest, they hold grief at multiple scales to reveal how personal memory and public history are intertwined.
—Eliel Jones
