Hamad Butt

Hamad Butt was a British South Asian artist active during the 1980s and 1990s in London and a contemporary of the Young British Artists. His artistic practice explored his national, racial, and sexual identity—as queer, British-Pakistani, Muslim by upbringing, and a person with AIDS. Prior to his untimely death in 1994, Butt completed and exhibited four significant sculptural installations which sought to forge new connections between art and science during the time of AIDS. He was also a prolific maker of paintings and works on paper.

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 Filled with new reproductions of his installation work as well as previously unpublished paintings, drawings, and writings, this catalog seeks firmly to establish Butt as a major figure in the canon of international contemporary art.