Making Across Boundaries: In conversation with Osman Yousefzada and Prof Paul Fieldsend-Danks

This is an exciting opportunity to find out more about Yousefzada’s art practice through Prof Fieldsend-Danks' experienced perspective. Together they'll explore how Yousefzada developed this exhibition and why he combined historic objects and film footage from The Box's collections and his own hand-crafted tapestries, busts, ceramic and glass sculptures.

Yousefzada’s unique practice crosses time, space and materials. Described as collage-based and trans-disciplinary, the sculptural installations he creates push boundaries, developing perspectives on questions of power, colonialism, class and race.

About Osman Yousefzada

Osman Yousefzada is a British born, internationally recognised interdisciplinary artist and writer who describes his practice as auto ethnographic, where personal stories become political. His South Asian heritage is a strong influence in his craft-inspired, sculptural practice. Born into the diaspora communities of Birmingham, he creates work that reflects and questions the injustices he saw first-hand during his childhood, and which still pervade in the world. South Asian influences are what many might first see when they encounter but his work, but it is far broader and unravels global histories that remain relevant today. They are explored through moving image, installations, text works, sculpture, garment making and performance.

Yousefzada is a research practitioner at the Royal College of Art, London and a visiting fellow at Cambridge University. His exhibition at The Box follows three significant solo exhibitions during the last 12 months at Charleston in Firle, Cartwright Hall in Bradford and Palazzo Franchetti in conjunction with the 60th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale.

Prof Paul Fieldsend-Danks

Professor Paul Fieldsend-Danks, an artist and educator, is the first Vice-Chancellor of Arts University Plymouth, where he led the institution’s transition to university status. With over 28 years of experience in UK higher education, Paul has held senior academic roles at several UK universities and has professional affiliations with Norwich University of the Arts, Oxford Brookes University, and the Universitat de Barcelona. Currently a Professor of Fine Arts Education, an RSA Fellow, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Paul joined the UK Council of Creative UK in 2023, and was elected as Chair of GuildHE’s UKADIA in 2024. He serves on the Plymouth Growth Board, Destination Plymouth, and advisory panels supporting creative industries in the Great South West.

Paul’s research includes both practice-based and educational strands of inquiry. He is interested in the production of artefacts within an expanded field of contemporary drawing practice and the discourses that inform new perspectives on creative learning in art and design higher education. He has exhibited his work in the UK, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan, Spain, and Switzerland, with works in both public and private collections.

As an academic, Paul is on the editorial board for the international journal Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice, published by Intellect, and was previously a co-director of the international drawing visualization and research journal Tracey, published by Loughborough University (2011-2014). Paul regularly contributes to academic peer reviews, including Making Futures, The Journal of Visual Arts Practice, and book reviews for Bloomsbury Publishing and Intellect Books.