Qasim Riza Shaheen – The Last Known Pose, Book Launch

LADA is delighted to host the London book launch for The Last Known Pose, a collection of written and visual responses to the works of British artist, Qasim Riza Shaheen edited by Mary Ann Hushlak and Monica B Pearl. 

Shaheen brings together an interest in apparel and costuming with embodying characters from medieval poet narratives and popular culture icons, an atypical approach to exploring notions of querying gender.

Through depictions of his own body and a vocabulary of simulation set within photographic, filmic and performance frames, he creates vignettes of reimagining(s). He invites the viewer to inhabit his world and to populate it with their own reactions and sentiments, and, possibly, becoming enveloped in their own memorious.

The Last Known Pose is a body of essays, reflections and conversations, by eminent scholars, curators, artists and collaborators, considering the multiple strands and experience of his many works.

The London book launch is an opportunity to discuss the trajectory of Shaheen’s body of work and the questions it raises with Qasim Riza Shaheen, the book’s editors, and a panel made up of Neil Bartlett (author, director and performer), Christoper Breward (Director of Collection and Research at the National Galleries of Scotland, and fashion historian, including the volume British Asian Style), Rachel Cunningham Clark (Creative Producer, Forma), and Mavin Khoo (currently Rehearsal Director to Akram Khan Company and Artistic Director of Zfin Malta Dance Ensemble.