ihsan saad ihsan tahir

About the artist

ihsan saad ihsan tahir (b. 1995, Cambridge, UK) lives and works in Copenhagen. He works across painting, drawing, sculpture and writing.

Central to tahir’s practice, is that is revolves around notions of class, cultural exchange, displacement, masculinity and representation of the Arab body in Western culture. 
In his art, tahir reconfigures the aesthetics of power giving it transformative potential and creating alternative narratives. By incorporating monumental relics, memorials, and architectural interventions, tahir examines how political ideology produces an aesthetic of power and how this aesthetic can be destabilized. 

An example is Mission Civilisatrice (2026), a colossal granite arm with a clenched fist altered into the “manus fica” gesture that can signify insult, protection from the evil eye, or a playful gesture used with children, depending on the eye who see this. The work is a copy of Pharaoh Amenhotep III that was looted and is in the collection of the British Museum. By reproducing this monumental symbol of imperial power in lightweight styrofoam, tahir deflates its authority and exposes the constructed nature of its value.

In reliefs and textiles tahir confronts stereotypical representations of Arab men as either historical and exotic objects or contemporary threats. Through explorations of masculinity, care, humor, and everyday imagery, he seeks to create more complex forms of representation. By placing contemporary images of Arab men in archaeological and monumental contexts, he challenges the distance between the historical object and the contemporary body, and questions who is allowed to be seen, represented, and assigned cultural value.

tahir often uses humor as a political method to undermine the authority of power, making jokes or using cultural references that are not necessarily accessible to everyone.

tahir will be part of a duo exhibition with Eliyah Mesayer at Fuxia 2 in Malmö September 24 and in February 2027 he will present his first solo show at the gallery.