Dear Kindest

Dear… Kindest… marks a moment in the practices of Mahtab Hussain (UK) and Shehzad Chowdhury (Bangladesh). Presented as a two channel HD video installation, the work sees both artists step from behind the camera and into the frame, occupying it with vulnerability, confrontation and presence.

Structured through performed monologues and fragments of correspondence, the installation traces the emotional and political weight of inheritance. It confronts colonial legacies, fractured histories and the complicated terrain of home and belonging. The work does not seek resolution. Instead, it holds tension — between distance and intimacy, between nation and self, between what is inherited and what must be unlearned.

Emerging from their 2020 digital collaboration I don’t know you, you don’t know me, the project grew from a sustained exchange across continents. Writing weekly without having met, the artists built trust through uncertainty. That fragile act of correspondence became both method and subject, exposing how relationships are formed, strained and redefined across geography, culture and memory.

Dear… Kindest… is not simply a dialogue between two artists. It is an exposure of process, a laying bare of doubt, masculinity, vulnerability and historical burden. It asks what it means to look at one another directly, and what it costs to be seen.

The full two channel film installation can be viewed online.
Watch Dear… Kindest… on YouTube.