Hamad Butt: Apprehensions, Whitechapel Gallery, exhibition review: ‘A salutary reminder’
Hamad Butt, Familiars 3: Cradle, 1992. Image: Jamal Butt
Are your mundane amusements worth someone else’s life? ‘Of course not!’ is the most obvious answer.
But then we have the Covid pandemic to prove how poorly people’s actions accord with common sense ethics.
So it was also during the HIV-AIDS ‘plague’ of the 1980s and 1990s.
The millions sacrificed to selfish pleasure-seeking in the two pandemics are testimony to the complex attitudes we have toward danger.
Artist Hamad Butt has taken the hazards of deadly disease as a central focus.
A new exhibition opening at the Whitechapel Gallery offers the first survey of the work of this Pakistan-born, London-raised artist who died of AIDS in 1994 at the age of 32.
Hamad Butt, Transmission, 1990. Image: Jamal Butt
Glass-based installations feature prominently in the show, including the Familiars series in which toxic chemicals are contained inside limpid glass vessels, and Transmission, where visitors are asked to don special glasses to protect their eyes against the UV light in which a series of glass books are bathed.
These works reference the dangers of transmissible disease, yet mingling in them are sidelong glances at the cultural risks of racism and homophobia.
On display is also a wide selection of wall-hung items, many of which are shown here for the first time.
These include energetic figurative oils as well as abstract drawings with motifs drawing on alchemy and Islamic architecture.
We live in perilous times, and if cultural representations can do little to reduce our exposure to toxicity in its various forms, they can help us to order it in our minds.
Hamad Butt’s oblique reflections on the urgent threats facing an earlier generation are a salutary reminder that safety is never assured.
Hamad Butt: Apprehensions runs until 7 September at the Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, E1 7QX.