BUTT, Hamad; JOHNSON, Dominic (ed.)
Hamad Butt: Apprehensions

One of the most innovative artists of his generation, Hamad Butt was a pioneer of intermedia art, bringing art into conversation with science, whilst also referencing his Queer and diasporic experiences. He offered a nuanced artistic response to the AIDS crisis in the UK, taking a conceptual rather than activist approach.

Butt’s conceptually and technically ambitious works seamlessly interweave popular culture, science, alchemy, science fiction, and social and cultural concerns, as forms that are simultaneously poetic and provocative. They imagine sex and desire in a time of ‘plague’ as seductive yet frightening, intimate yet isolating, compelling yet dangerous – literally, in some cases, threatening to kill or injure.

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, and raised in East London, Butt was British South Asian, Muslim by upbringing, and Queer. A contemporary of the Young British Artists, and their peer at Goldsmiths’ College, London, Butt was described by art critics as epitomising the new “hazardism” in art of the 1990s, as his works often imply physical risk or endangerment.

Before his untimely death in 1994, aged 32 of AIDS-related complications, Butt had completed and shown four major sculptural works; Transmission (1990) and the three-part installation, Familiars (1992), as well as leaving behind writings, drawings and plans for new installations. Butt’s work offered a potent and critical response to HIV/AIDS, while opening up new dialogues between art and science to explore themes of precarity, toxicity, the spread of viruses, homophobia and racism – issues that continue to resonate with frightening poignancy today.

This monograph includes contributions from esteemed art historians, curators and artists that look at Butt’s encounters with science and alchemy, his relationships with diasporic and queer communities in the 1990s, and his lasting impact and legacies. Filled with new reproductions of his installation work as well as previously unpublished paintings, drawings and writings, this catalogue seeks to firmly establish Butt as a major figure in the canon of international contemporary art. [publishers’ note]

Published by Whitechapel Gallery / Prestel, 2025
Monographs