Abdi Osman: Lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
From Discover Series.
About:
Abdi Osman is a Somali-Canadian multidisciplinary artist whose work focuses on questions of black masculinity as it intersects with Muslim and queer identities.
Labeeb Series.
Labeeb Series.
Osman’s work puts African/black trans-people on record. It questions how we understand the various roles bodies play or perform, and which bodies or genders are understood to perform them—in particular, assumptions we make about female, black, queer, and trans bodies.
Portals Collages Series.
Osman’s video and photography work has been shown in Canada and internationally in both group and solo exhibitions. Osman holds an MFA in Documentary Media from Ryerson University, and a B.A. in African Studies from the University of Toronto. Previous work has been supported by grants from the Ontario Arts Council. His photographs are also housed in private collections and the Art Bank of the Canada Council for the Arts. Among numerous exhibitions, a selection of works was exhibited in the yearlong group show DiaporaArt: Strategy and Seduction by Canadian Artists from Culturally Diverse Communities at Rideau Hall, Ottawa. Osman was an artist-in-residence at the McColl Centre for Visual Arts in Charlotte North Carolina in 2010. In 2012, he was a fellow at The Interdisciplinary Center for Culture and Creativity (ICCC) at the University of Saskatchewan. Most recently, Osman gave invited artist talks at the University of Rochester, New York (2014) and the University of Toronto (2016), and held an artist fellowship at the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies at the University of Bayreuth, Germany in 2015. Upcoming exhibitions include Canadian Belonging, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Canada, May 5-July 3, 2016.
