In Road to Hybridabad — his first solo museum exhibition — Detroit-based artist Osman Khan re-reads the magical and fantastical figures found in folktales and lore, with a particular focus on those from South Asia, the Middle East, and other Muslim and immigrant traditions. Khan interprets these figures through contemporary technologies through a new body of multimedia work that includes a ten-foot-tall animatronic djinn head, a forest of telephone poles with djinns atop them, drone-powered flying carpets, a boundary wall-destroying sound system, a fountain of endlessly flowing honey, and a robot-like sculpture that is in fact a storytelling Scheherazade AI. The sprawling exhibition invites visitors on a journey across borders, through time, and between legend and history, encouraging reconsideration and rewriting of narratives around identity, difference, and power reflected in the tales we tell ourselves.

Originally scheduled for late May, the opening shifted to August to allow additional time for MASS MoCA’s creative team to build and prepare elements of this major new commission in collaboration with the artist. The MASS MoCA Members’ opening celebration will now take place on Saturday, August 24, 6-8pm, with a public conversation with Khan on Sunday, August 25, at 2pm.