Important Notice

Farhad Hussain’s colourful, whimsical and cleverly subversive family portraits incorporate elements from a wide variety of sources including the kitschy poster art of India’s bazaars and cinemas, Indian miniature painting, traditional Japanese prints, and the kalighat pats of Bengal. Through these cartoon-like ensembles, the artist explores the revelatory but forbidden pleasures of voyeurism, the nuances of human relationships, and what lies... Farhad Hussain’s colourful, whimsical and cleverly subversive family portraits incorporate elements from a wide variety of sources including the kitschy poster art of India’s bazaars and cinemas, Indian miniature painting, traditional Japanese prints, and the kalighat pats of Bengal. Through these cartoon-like ensembles, the artist explores the revelatory but forbidden pleasures of voyeurism, the nuances of human relationships, and what lies beneath the façades of freeze-frame portraits.

Pairing the mundane with the unfamiliar, the artist weaves humour, irony and a certain level of discomfort into these colourful domestic vignettes. In this canvas, eleven family members gather to celebrate a birthday in what appears to be a scene of domestic bliss. However, on closer examination, certain elements seem slightly out of place. On the table, a dagger menacingly faces the birthday girl, while a squirrel thoughtfully contemplates a half-eaten banana. The cake, like the patriarch’s turban, is threateningly bright, in stark opposition to the artist’s monochromatic rendering of the mother, table and toys in shades of gray. On the walls, images of younger versions of the same family members preside over the scene. Subtle comments on life beyond the moments in which scenes like this are posed and captured, these elements push viewers to interrogate the notion of the ‘picture perfect’ family.

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