Bios

Mahtab Hussain is a British artist whose work explores identity, race and belonging, with a particular focus on the British Muslim experience. Raised in Birmingham by first-generation Pakistani immigrant parents, Hussain works across photography, film, sculpture and installation to examine how individuals and communities are seen, represented and understood. His practice is rooted in long-term engagement with the people and places he photographs, creating work that moves between the personal and the political, and questions established narratives around race, faith, masculinity and Britishness.

 

Recent exhibitions and projects include British Art Show 10 (2026–28), What Did You Want To See? (Ikon Gallery, 2025), Please Take a Seat (The Line, 2025) and The Forgotten Army Project (2024–2026). Major bodies of work include You Get Me? (MACK, 2017), Going Back Home to Where I Came From (2016) and Honest With You (2018).

 

Hussain’s work is held in major international collections including the Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), J. Paul Getty Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art and the UK Government Art Collection. He is currently developing Muslims in America, an ongoing body of work documenting Muslim communities across the United States and Canada. He lives and works in London.

Guy Gunaratne FRSL is a novelist, playwright, and visual artist whose work spans literature, theatre, and moving image. Born in London to Sri Lankan parents, Gunaratne explores identity, migration, and cultural memory through politically charged and formally inventive storytelling. Their debut novel, In Our Mad and Furious City (2018), won the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Jhalak Prize, and the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, while also being longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize.

 

Their second novel, Mister, Mister (2023), expanded this vision globally, interrogating extremism, surveillance, and the politics of representation. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024, Gunaratne has also published essays in Granta, The Guardian, and Wasafiri. They divide their time between London and Malmö.