East, London
Mohammed Z. Rahman
Remember to Live
PeerPeer is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in a public gallery by London-based British-Bengali artist and writer Mohammed Z. Rahman. With a background in social anthropology, Rahman works with painting, sculpture, zine-making and illustration to interweave personal, social and folk histories of migration, labour, queerness, family and class. Comprising a new series of paintings based on Rahman's ongoing research on dreams and memories from the many communities that make up the artist's relationship to London, this exhibition is a life-affirming interrogation of whose lives are considered memorable and the desires that lead us to cement and reimagine what we consider history. Often taking a conversation between Rahman and their subject as a starting point, Rahman's treatment of their interlocutors' inner worlds weaves aspects of his anthropological training, as well as Rahman's own personal experience, self-taught portraiture and sculptural practice. The resulting works include reflections on a dreamscape developed in collaboration with Ballroom house mother, Bambi Laveaux; memories of the artist watching their brother practice kickflips when living in Ilford in the 2000s; Rahman's cat Horace, with details representing Horace's relation to pleasure through boxes, KFC and catnip; and a self-portrait of the artist in their current room and studio in Tottenham exploring the relationships between labour, dreaming and sleep. Straddling themes of interspecies, internationalist and intergenerational kinship, subculture and labour, various solidarities foreground the work and re-evaluate the mundane, imaginary and bygone as magically alive.