Oliver Husain
Garden of the Legend of THE GOLDEN SNAIL
Built on the initiative and ideas of the late Madame Suharto, Keong Emas (The Golden Snail) Theatre was inaugurated in 1984 as the first IMAX theatre in Indonesia. The building’s unique architecture references a popular fairy tale about a princess turned into a snail - but was also meant to promote a new source of protein, the Golden Apple snail, introduced to farmers in Indonesia around the same time. Moving between tiny and monumental, soft and solid, mythical and invasive, this graceful animal is taking on many forms, making its slow-paced way through the topography of IMAX cinema itself.
Artist and filmmaker Oliver Husain is based in Toronto, Canada. Husain’s projects often begin with fragment of history, a rumour, a personal encounter or a distant memory. He uses a wide range of cinematic languages and visual pleasures — such as dance, puppetry, costume, special effects — to animate his research and charm or fold the viewers into complex narrative set-ups. His most recent solo exhibition took place at Gallery TPW, Toronto, and at Western Front, Vancouver, in 2016. Husain has participated in numerous international exhibitions and film festivals including: Forum Expanded, Berlinale Film Festival, 2017; Kunstverein Nürnberg, 2017; in:future Ontario Place, 2016; and at Experimenta Film Festival, Bangalore, 2017.
His work is represented by Susan Hobbs Gallery.