Art of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mussalmaan Musclemen
Strut
470 Castro St
San Francisco, CA 94114
USA
Mussalmaan Musclemen, Mussalmaan being the Urdu word for a Muslim man, attempts to articulate a new language. It lifts images from an Urdu translation of an exercise manual written by Arnold Shwarznager in the early 1980s. The book exists neither fully in the East or the West but in a space of its own creation. American models perform for a Western male gaze but the Urdu script appeals to a South Asian audience. There is a naïve homo-sociality to the book and it descends swiftly into homoeroticism.
In order to further the ambiguity of the book I scan certain pages and re-print them onto cotton fabric. Through the more craft and feminine traditions of fabric collage and embroidery I can re-imagine a new form of masculinity, literally deconstructing in order to re-construct in the in-between space that is this translation.