Made in America, Foreigner series
Reactive dye silk screen on recycled cotton-blend dropcloth (made in Pakistan, bought at Menards in Bloomfield Hills, MI, USA), choarcoal
4 x 6 feet each, 2024
This is the first piece in Hussain's "Foreigner series", investigating freedom of movement and its costs.
Hussain deconstructs the familiar form of a car, breaking it apart to explore themes of origins, identity, connection, and separation through the internal combustion engine - a magnetic force drawing immigrants to metro-Detroit. The engine becomes a metaphor for her family's heart: its rust, oil, residue, hard work, and lifespan mirror their own wearing down and breaking apart. The work explores dualities: marriage and divorce, man and woman, fiber and metal, tradition and progress. Against the backdrop of electric vehicles replacing combustion engines, the work contemplates obsolescence and adaptation. It speaks to both freedom of movement and its costs: carbon emissions, genocide, the world and flesh burning. Through it all runs the persistent hum of potential—both its promise and its burden.