Mahtab Hussain’s tender portraits peel back the layers of British Asian masculinity

Mahtab Hussain’s work is the product of ten years spent diligently lensing the British Asian community of which he is a product. Growing up British Pakistani in Birmingham, Hussain struggled with his own identity, never feeling as though he fitted with one cultural group. “The white kids would call me ‘Paki’ and ask me when I was going home,” he tells me. “The Asian guys were like, ‘Where’ve you come from? You look like us but you’re English.’ I was being called ‘coconut’ or ‘bounty’.”

Hussain then moved to London, where he studied History of Art at Goldsmiths and was introduced to the ideas of black academics Frantz Fanon and Stuart Hall. “I just thought, ‘Oh my God. Why isn’t anyone making work about British Asians?” he remembers. “I went home and wrote on a piece of paper that I wanted to be the artist to do this.” Five years working in galleries brought Hussain to the feeling that he was “invisible” in the art surrounding him. “I decided to do it myself. I was like, ‘Fuck this. I’m just going to give it a go.’”

And so, Hussain returned to the community he left. Initially photographing British Asians in Birmingham, he went on to lens the shared experience of young men across the country. For Hussain, it was a rediscovery of his own community and a way to understand who these men – British Asian, working class and Muslim – really were. “I would say to them, ‘Aren’t you sick and tired of being labelled a terrorist and told this country isn’t yours? The media is painting us as this barbaric and violent community. I need your help to change this narrative’.” It’s an approach we desperately need and, as Hussain says, respect and understanding is essential in the context of widespread prejudice. “The conversation is right for now – with Trump and Brexit, the politics of hate and divide and where our society is going, we are ready for this conversation.”

Those questions of assimilation and identity are embodied in the exhibition with the half statement, half question, “You get me?” – which is repeated over and over again by those sitting for portraits. “’You get me?’ It’s forceful, but at the same time, it’s showing fragility and vulnerability,” Hussain explains. “They’d make a strong statement and then say, ‘You get me?’ They were asking, ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’”