Over the course of a decade, twin brothers Hasan and Husain have grown from art school graduates to internationally -recognised and multiple award-winning artists. They have won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art in 2014.
Their work initially reflected commentary about their hometown in Cape Town. During this period the scope of their work has shifted form the local to the global. Their work can best be described as an engagement between local inflections of global conflicts.
The work produced by the brothers is fundamentally informed by their religion (Islam) which I influences subject matter. Because of Islam law and the ethics of conveying a subject fairly in photography, the brothers are the only subjects in their images, enacting different role in layered narratives.
The photographic series titled ‘Unrest’ tells a complicated story against a backdrop of conflicts often described in popular discourse and news reportage as “religious” or “cultural” (antagonism between the East and West, between Islam and Christianity, between Sunni and Shia).
Themes explored by this body of work include migration and diaspora, violence, colliding histories, economic exchange and identity.
In Unrest, the artists turn their lenses on Cape Town. The heritage of the Bo-Kaap and the legacy represented by the Cape’s kramats are set against the blight of poverty, gangsterism and drugs on the Cape Flats. The memory of forced displacement in District Six is counterpointed with the unfulfilled promise of freedom manifested in informal settlements like Mandela Park.
The exhibition is currently showing at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg and ends 20th June 2015.