Mohsin Shafi (* 1982 in Montgomery, Pakistan) is a South Asian Lahore based artvist, whose practice refers a liminal territory in both theory and myth, known as “Third Space”. The neither-nor, the in-between, the soft underbelly where boundaries blur and categories melt, somewhere between the two worlds.

Shafi moves through the many dimensions of being and becoming with a sensitivity that infuses every aspect of his practice. His work mediates on the porous boundaries between fact and fiction, imagining past where records fade and a future that longs to be both – desired and manifested.

Most works in the exhibition reflect postcolonial cultural Third Space Theory, that is a sociolinguistic postulation which challenges our sense of the historical identity of culture as a homogenizing, unifying force, authenticated by the originary past, kept alive in the national tradition of the people. These works are intertwined with nostalgia, suppressed narratives, collective exile, experiences of loss, trauma, survival, grief and the fragile architectures of care - revealing how the Self can be reimagined through tenderness and the quiet labor of emotional repair.

Hence the exhibition, equally foregrounds resilience, healing, belief on the universe and self-acceptance – an embrace of one’s multifaceted and often contradictory ways of being. In tracing these transformations, Shafi’s practice situates within wider global ecologies and equalities, offering a sustained meditation on the shifting boundaries of belonging, intimacy, and gender expression we inherit, resist, and remake. 

The exhibition centers on a new experimental immersive audiovisual work “Malamatiyya” (The Reprimanded). The work is an extremely vulnerable yet intimate exploration of longing and belonging, indigenous erasure of folk love stories of two-spirted people, afterlife of colonial legacies in South Asia. 

“Malamatiyya” is a monumental meditation on queerness, caution, celebration. Situated between the autobiographical and the performative, the work not only focuses on the poetics and politics of one’s personal identity, but it also honors and attunes buried, invisible histories of gender non-normativity, which are as diverse as South Asia itself. 

The vocals of the work have come to life in collaboration with voice artist Zainub J. Khwaja who’s practice of music is rooted in various indigenous oppernticeship traditions of Indian subcontinent. 

The work refers the unforgettable love story of a 16th-century’s first major early-modern Punjabi Sufi poet Shah Hussain who is popularly known as Madho Lal Hussain due to his profound and unique bond with Madho Lal, a Hindu Brahmin lad. Their relationship transcended societal norms and religious boundaries, symbolizing unity and love in South Asia. 

The exhibition marks the artist’s first institutional solo presentation, bringing together pivotal video works produced over the past one and half decade. This constellation of self-portraits in moving and still images with fragments of personal memorabilia forms a living, ever-unfolding archive from various sources – one that gathers the bittersweet residue of the past alongside the tempered contentments of the present.

Throughout the exhibition, the artist revisits and reframes the self and its vulnerability. The selected works are the intellectual equivalent of a dew-wet threshold: not the room behind us, not the field ahead, but the brief tremor where both meet in-between often appears as a borderland. 

Two of these video works began during his residency in Krems.  Inspired from personal journals of Sissy, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, they are radically poetic, highly personal works, delicately combining history with present, imagined and real. 

From December 2023 to January 2024, Shafi was a guest artist in Krems at AIR – ARTIST IN RESIDENCE Lower Austria. Shafi used his stay in Krems to continue working on his oeuvre, but also on subjects that blend tragedies with tenderness, and humor comes to forefront to repair and reclaim post-colonial personal encounters, such as xenophobia and exclusion. As a man with darker skin and beard with ID carrying Muslim and Pakistani passport, like his previous trips abroad, he adds another page in his decade old work on his replica passport artwork banters on hours-long stays at Vienna Airport. Even currently Shafi’s is marked by complications in obtaining last minute visa, and uncertainty of his arrival for his AIR and this solo show at the Kunsthalle Krems.