户尔空间｜2025 巴塞尔艺术展巴塞尔展会·意象无限｜展览现场

展览现场，意象无限，2025

Exhibition View, Unlimited, 2025

Photo by: Ivan Erofeev

意象无限（Unlimited）意象无限（Unlimited）?

 参展艺术家  Artists 

纳迪拉·侯赛因

Nadira Husain

在 2025 年巴塞尔艺术展巴塞尔展会的意象无限单元中，户尔空间携手柏林的 PSM 画廊，联合呈现法国艺术家纳迪拉·侯赛因（Nadira Husain）的大型作品《闹鬼的博物馆（The Haunted Museum）》。

此次展出作品为一件规模宏大的三联画，融合绘画、雕塑、陶瓷、镜面与建筑装饰语言，围绕殖民时期被掠夺、从原属地迁移至欧洲博物馆的文化遗产展开深刻反思。侯赛因通过“视觉再掌控”的叙事方式，赋予这些被制度性展陈所束缚的文物以新生命，探讨博物馆与殖民历史之间的复杂关系。

At Art Basel Basel 2025, Hua International is proud to present The Haunted Museum, a three-dimensional triptych by French artist Nadira Husain, featured in the Unlimited sector, and co-presented with PSM, Berlin.

Blending painting, ceramics, sculpture, and architectural ornamentation, The Haunted Museum addresses the violent displacement of cultural heritage during the colonial period and the persistent tension between institutional ownership and the call for restitution. At its heart lies the Bust of Nefertiti, originally from Tell el-Amarna in Egypt and today a permanent icon of the Neues Museum in Berlin. In Husain's work, Nefertiti is reimagined as a post-migrant figure navigating Berlin's contemporary landscape, dressed in Adidas apparel and surrounded by mundane yet charged urban settings.

展览现场，意象无限，2025

Exhibition View, Unlimited, 2025

在《闹鬼的博物馆（The Haunted Museum）》中，纳迪拉·侯赛因（Nadira Husain）围绕殖民时期被掠夺、从原属地迁移至欧洲博物馆的文物构建了一种“再掌控”的叙事。她为那些被制度性展陈所囚禁的物件重新注入生命，使其重新获得能动性与话语权。更具体地说，她重新诠释了来自埃及泰勒·阿马尔那（Tell el-Amarna）时期的文物，重点聚焦于奈费尔提蒂（Nefertiti）的标志性半身像——这一作品现收藏于柏林新博物馆（Neues Museum）。侯赛因将奈费尔提蒂视为柏林“后移民认同”的象征，她游走于两种现实之间：一方面，她的起源地是埃及，但至今仍缺席于其原属地的文化语境中；另一方面，自20世纪20年代起，她在柏林的文化景观中占据重要地位，成为市民心目中的文化偶像，至今仍是该馆的代表性藏品之一。在奈费尔提蒂周围，侯赛因引入了巴比伦伊什塔尔门（Ishtar Gate）及其“行进大道”（Processional Way）建筑群的视觉元素。在这里，艺术家的关注点不再是西方博物馆中常见的“孤立文物”，而是那些被整体迁移、并在博物馆语境中重新构建的建筑结构——尤其指柏林佩加蒙博物馆（Pergamon Museum）中所呈现的这些大型文化遗迹。

In The Haunted Museum, Nadira Husain crafts a reappropriative narrative around artifacts displaced during the colonial period from their places of origin to European museums, breathing life back into objects that are held captive within institutional displays. period, focusing on the iconic bust of Nefertiti, housed in Berlin's Neues Museum. Husain approaches Nefertiti as a symbol of Berlin's post-migratory identity, caught between two realities: on one hand, her origins in Egypt, where she remains absent, and on the other, her significant presence in Berlin's cultural landscape since the 1920s, where she became a cultural icon to its citizens, standing as a key masterpiece to this day. Surrounding her are references to the architectural complex of Babylon's Ishtar Gate and Processional Way: here, the focus is not on isolated objects, as is often the case with most artifacts displayed in Western museums, but on entire architectural elements that were displaced and reconstructed in a museal context—Berlin's Pergamon Museum.

展览现场，意象无限，2025

Exhibition View, Unlimited, 2025

侯赛因将上述元素编织成一个三维三联画装置：主体为绘画帆布，顶部饰有彩绘柱头，辅以镜面与陶瓷细节装饰，唤起对巴比伦柱式结构的联想。三联画描绘了奈费尔提蒂作为一位当代柏林移民的形象——她身穿阿迪达斯运动服，置身于种种漫不经心的日常场景中。这一设定呼应了阿马尔那艺术风格：这种风格在奈费尔提蒂丈夫在位期间曾彻底变革古埃及的艺术规范，首次引入描绘王室家庭生活的“类型场景”。在此语境中，奈费尔提蒂成为一则关于解放与再掌控的视觉叙事的主角。她时而沉思、时而行动，但始终坦然无惧地回望观众，反转了长期以来赋予她的、带有凝视意味的观看机制。最终，她——或至少是她的某种象征性化身——象征性地骑在一头巴比伦雄狮之上，走出“行进大道”，这一画面正好对应着博物馆中重建城墙上的装饰浮雕。这只猫科动物——在此被演绎为一头带着幼崽的母狮——既是一位具象角色，也是整个装置中反复出现的视觉母题。它所散发的母性与哺乳类动物的守护气质，以及其皮毛图案所带来的肌理感，弥漫于每一幅画面之中，牵引着观众的目光在叙事中流动，为整个作品注入温暖而张力十足的视觉张弛。

Husain weaves these elements into a three-dimensional triptych consisting of painted canvases, topped with painted capitals and adorned with mirrors and ceramic details, evoking Babylonian columns. The panels portray Nefertiti as a modern-day immigrant in Berlin, dressed in Adidas clothing and captured in nonchalant everyday scenes–a nod to Amarna art, which revolutionized the artistic conventions of ancient Egypt, particularly during the reign of Nefertiti's husband, by introducing genre scenes depicting royal family life. Here, Nefertiti becomes the protagonist in a narrative of emancipation and reappropriation. She is sometimes pensive, sometimes active, but fully unafraid to look back at us, inverting the gaze long bestowed upon her, and ultimately symbolically exiting—at least, a version of her—Procession Street atop a Babylonian lion, directly mirroring the decorative figures on the reconstructed city walls. The feline creature—extended here to a lioness with her cub—is both a character and recurring motif in the installation; exuding a sense of maternal, mammalian protection, the texture of its fur pattern imbues the atmosphere of each panel, anchoring the viewers'eyes throughout the narrative.

展览现场，意象无限，2025

Exhibition View, Unlimited, 2025

叙事的展开是非线性且开放式的，灵感融合了莫卧儿细密画构图与漫画分镜的形式。胡赛因创作出极尽繁复、多层次的画面构成，不设严格主次之分，荒诞地交织高雅与通俗的文化符码。比如，传统的印度Buti花卉图案和古巴比伦的瓷砖纹样与尼菲尔提蒂（Nefertiti）仿制雕像相交错——这些雕像通常是为埃及游客制作的纪念品——再加上常见的塑料单体椅（monobloc chair），共同构成了一个不可避免的、充满媚俗气息的都市景观。这些作品中的视觉饱和与夸张手法，不仅剥夺了观者从单一视角进入作品的可能性，也彰显了对传统等级制度的无礼与挑衅，从而颠覆了装饰与艺术之间传统的分类方式。在《闹鬼的博物馆》（The Haunted Museum）以及胡赛因的整体创作实践中，装饰元素并非用来衬托主体，它本身具有艺术上的自主性，并饱含伊斯兰艺术中“无限接近于神圣”的观念。

The narration's unfolding, non-linear and open-ended, is inspired by a fusion of Mughal miniature compositions and comic-book strips. Husain crafts maximalist, multilayered compositions with no strict hierarchies, which absurdly interweave high and low-brow cultural codes. Buti flowers and Babylonian tile patterns thus intersect with painted Nefertiti replicas—usually made for tourists in Egypt—and monobloc chairs, making up an inevitably kitsch urban landscape. The visual saturation and exaggeration of the pieces both robs viewers of singular entry points into the compositions and highlights the irreverence towards hierarchical systems, thus subverting the traditional categorizations of ornamentation and art. Ornamentation, in The Haunted Museum and Husain’s practice overall, is not used to complement main subjects—it is artistically autonomous and imbued with Islamic art notions of closeness to the infinite.

展览现场，意象无限，2025

Exhibition View, Unlimited, 2025

在这片密集、充满视觉张力与生动人物的图像织网中，《闹鬼的博物馆》大胆提出了对博物馆机制的再掌控诉求。这一诉求贯穿于作品之中——无论是装置本身的纪念碑式气质、奈费尔提蒂回望的目光，还是镜面饰件中映照出的观众自身，都在不断提醒我们直面“归还”的议题，促使我们思考自身在博物馆这一合法化框架中的角色。奈费尔提蒂的半身像自抵达德国以来，便几乎持续遭到埃及方面的归还要求；这一点与伊拉克对巴比伦文物的追索相似——这些要求迄今始终未被满足。埃及与美索不达米亚文明的关键遗产之所以被大规模提取与异地重置，正是由于德国、法国与英国在殖民时期的合谋行为，使得博物馆体制与殖民历史之间的内在联系愈加清晰可辨。

Amidst the dense web of visual richness and aliveness of its figures, The Haunted Museum stakes a loud claim to reappropriate the museum apparatus. It permeates the piece—in the monumentalisation of the installation, in Nefertiti's gaze, in our own reflection through the mirror appliqués—and urges us to address the question of restitution, prompting us to reflect on our own role within the legitimising framework of the museum itself. The bust of Nefertiti has been the subject of restitution claims by Egypt almost since its arrival in Germany, much like the Babylonian artifacts claimed by Iraq— demands that have consistently been denied. This extraction and relocation of major elements of Egyptian and Mesopotamian heritage were made possible through the colonial complicity between Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, underscoring the intrinsic connection between museums and colonial history.

展览现场，意象无限，2025

Exhibition View, Unlimited, 2025

除此之外，作品亦揭示了一系列并行问题，例如：西方国家通过掠夺和占有这些文物所积累的经济与文化资本，以及这些西方国家对文物原属地区人口实施的严格边境政策。这种尖锐对比进一步强化了殖民性权力如何跨越时间与空间，以不同形式持续存在。最终，《闹鬼的博物馆》旨在探讨这些文物在欧洲博物馆中，对于“后移民社群”所扮演的角色，以及它们所激发的象征性与想象力。通过绘画性的叙事方式，侯赛因试图将这些文物“科幻化”，赋予它们新的叙事维度与未来可能性。她重新激活了巴比伦建筑群的视觉语言，使其成为一个神话般的交汇之地——一个既被当代人栖居、又充满历史记忆的城市结构。在奈费尔提蒂警觉凝视之下，观众于其中游移于多元文化与再掌控的命题之间，仿佛置身于一场关于归属、历史与未来的视觉辩证之中。

Beyond this, the work also highlights parallel issues such as the economic and cultural capital accumulated by Western countries through the appropriation of these objects, and the strict border policies imposed on populations from the very regions where the artifacts were taken. Ultimately, The Haunted Museum explores the role these artifacts play in European museums for post-migration communities, and the symbolic and imaginary power they generate, seeking, through pictorial narration, to science-fictionalize them. Husain revives the Babylonian architectural complex, rendering it a mythical meeting point—an inhabited, contemporary city structure—where viewers fluctuate along questions of multiculturalism and reappropriation, under Nefertiti's watchful eye.

展览现场，意象无限，2025

Exhibition View, Unlimited, 2025

关于艺术家

纳迪拉·侯赛因的作品通过视觉形式探讨“后移民”（post-migration）、“跨文化性”（transculturality）和“文化混合性”（cultural hybridity）等主题。她的创作以绘画为出发点，延展至空间性和多媒体表达，常常结合纺织、陶瓷等工艺技艺。她借用来自不同文化体系的符号与叙事，这些文化背景与她自身的多元文化身份息息相关。通过将这些元素融合进复杂的图像构图中，她强调形式与叙事中的相互关联。她的创作方法接纳多元艺术史的解读路径，挑战以欧洲为中心的观念，倡导一种包容、多元的观看方式。

在她的作品中，莫卧儿细密画（Mughal miniatures）的图像语言与欧洲漫画（European comics）相互交织，同时融入来自拟人兽亚文化（furry subculture）的拟人化角色，这些角色又与苏菲派伊斯兰文化（Sufi Islamic culture）产生对话与关联。她通过扁平化前景与背景、打破传统透视与比例关系，解构了经典绘画中的形式等级。在许多作品中，这种绘画语言进一步延展为空间装置，从而瓦解单一视角的观看方式。

在艺术实践之外，侯赛因还长期从事教学与集体行动。2021年至2024年，她曾担任柏林艺术大学（Berlin University of the Arts）的客座教授，与玛丽娜·纳普鲁什金娜（Marina Naprushkina）共同授课。自2017年起，她也一直是柏林-魏森湖艺术学院（Berlin-Weissensee Art Academy）“foundationClass”项目的讲师与导师。她积极参与自组织的集体艺术项目，长期投身于以反种族主义和交叉性价值为核心的艺术实践中。

她目前主要在柏林、巴黎和海得拉巴三地生活、汲取灵感并展开工作。

Nadira Husain's work explores visual forms that engages with themes of post-migration, transculturality and cultural hybridity. Her practice originates in painting and expands into spatial and multimedia expressions, frequently incorporating craft-based techniques like textiles and ceramics. By appropriating symbols and narratives from diverse cultural frameworks connected to her own multicultural background, she weaves these elements into complex pictorial compositions that emphasizes interconnections and relationships in both form and narrative. Her approach embraces varied interpretations of art histories, challenging Eurocentric perspectives and embracing a pluralistic view. 

In her work, references to Mughal miniatures intersect with European comics and merge anthropomorphic figures from furry subculture, who, in turn, engage with Sufi Islamic culture. By flattening foreground and background, perspective and scale, her paintings dissolve traditional formal hierarchies. Her pieces frequently expand into spatial installations, displacing the notion of a central view point. 

Beyond her art practice, she has served as a guest professor at the Berlin University of the Arts from 2021 to 2024, where she co-taught with Marina Naprushkina. Since 2017, she has also been a lecturer and mentor at *foundationClass at the Berlin-Weissensee Art Academy. Engaged in self-organized collective initiatives, she regularly contributes to projects grounded in anti-racist and intersectional values within the arts. 

Berlin (DE), Paris (FR), and Hyderabad (IN) are the main cities where she lives, draws inspiration, and works.