The Hurt Business

Overview

The Hurt Business is Omar Musa's new exhibition of lithographs and woodcuts at Megalo Print Studio. "The Hurt Business" is a phrase used to describe boxing, but could equally refer to international politics – also an arena of sanctioned violence, triumphalism and competing forces. Whether it be the invasion of Venezuela, the genocide in Gaza, ICE agents in the streets of the US, or kill squads during the Philippines' War On Drugs, Musa asks the question "Who gets to sanction violence? And more importantly – who says stop?"

In The Hurt Business, we see colliding woodcut images that represent political triumphalism and ritualised violence: boxers, ghostly referees, crocodiles, balaclavas, jerry cans, dice. Lithographs, adorned with gold leaf, are based on interviews with fishermen and families of victims of Philippines' former president Rodrigo Duterte's War on Drugs. A blindfolded Mother Mary stands in a cemetery dedicated to the victims, surrounded by gold stars representing them. Death masks, rendered in intense blue on blue, based on pre-colonial South-East Asian funerary masks, nod to the rituals around death, and possibly – killing. The Hurt Business is work that ricochets between dark humour and poetry, using sous rature to contest questions of power and moral governance.