The Garden of Historical Delight: Profile of Firoz Mahmud
By Mustafa Zaman
Portrait of FIROZ MAHMUD. Courtesy the artist.
In the opening chapter of A Defense of the Real (2007), a book about the life and work of art historian Carl Einstein, author David Quigley contextualizes Einstein’s revolutionary ideas, stating that in the 20th century, amid war and industrialization, an urgency to rethink societal structures emerged. Today, the need to constantly interrogate the rhetoric that has developed out of the “alliance between science, heavy industry and national sovereignty,” in Quigley’s words, remains. Further, art arguably has the responsibility to combat the hegemonic powers that make such alliances possible. Intertwining aesthetic concerns with socio-historical issues, Firoz Mahmud has devised various means of reconsidering the events and belief systems of the past, while tackling their contemporary effects.
