Hamad Butt, “Cradle,” 1992

“The danger of blindness in desiring to see the light without darkened glasses, yet to leave with a rosy glow,” Hamad Butt writes. [1] In 1990, Butt penned this alchemical verse as part of “Apprehensions,” his undergraduate dissertation at Goldsmith’s College, London. The same title is given to his posthumous retrospective recently opened at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, which tours to Whitechapel Gallery, London, later this year. While Butt exhibited frequently during his lifetime, wider interest in his work was largely belated. He first came to prominence with the exhibition of Familiars (1992) in the group show “Rites of Passage: Art for the End of the Century” at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) in 1995 following his death from AIDS complications the year prior. “Apprehensions” now examines his entire practice. The verse, however, appears to directly reference his first installation, Transmission (1990), consisting of nine ersatz books produced from glass with retina-damaging UV lights as the spines: each pseudo-book lies open, resting upon a rehal, a stand for the Holy Quran; these stands are spaced evenly to form a circle wherein protective eyewear is scattered on the floor. Alternating between the recto and verso, Butt engraved onto the books’ glass panes individual triffids: the phallic aliens from John Wyndham’s novel The Day of The Triffids (1951) that blind humans with their tentacular sting. Even though wearable protective goggles were provided at the entrance to IMMA’s House Galleries, I experienced a momentary tear in my field of vision when looking up from viewing the triffids. As Butt’s verse proscribes, I did not walk away from the installation without my vision, but a sense of optimism: a rosy glow.

Hamad Butt, “Transmission,” 1990

The gallery housing Transmission is preceded by a smaller one that is painted in the same navy blue and features a series of previously unseen sketches on paper related to the work’s development, as well as a re-creation of a discarded element, titled Fly-Piece, from the original Transmission installation. On top of a varnished wooden noticeboard with three glass-paneled sections sits the word “Transmission” in gold paint; each compartment of the noticeboard houses three elliptical sentences printed on white paper, whilst at the bottom of the middle unit are wood shavings and fly pupae. The hatched flies feed off the printed paper coated with sugar solution, continuing their natural cycles of life and death throughout the exhibition. The prophetic lines heighten our reception of the installation in the adjoining room with sentences that refer to the UV light as a “penetrative radiation that damages sight.” In the exhibition catalogue, Dominic Johnson, one of the curators, considers Fly-Piece as “one of the earliest works of bio-art in the UK” and also notes how Butt had abandoned and destroyed this element in light of Damien Hirst’s A Thousand Years (1990) similarly using live flies. [2] Leaving aside the tale that the presumed ringleader of the Young British Artists copied Butt’s Transmission, there is an illuminating difference between the two installations. Hirst’s imitation is violent, as the flies gravitate toward the ultraviolet fly trap suspended above a severed cow’s head, where death awaits. In contrast, the flies in Butt’s installation, like us, are positioned in proximity to danger yet never slain.

Hamad Butt, “Fly-Piece,” 1990

The first of the three-part installation Familiars (1992) – Butt’s final finished artwork before his passing – is presented in a gallery lit by a bright white light unlike the blue ultraviolet of Transmission in the preceding room. Curved steel armatures emerge from a raised white floor to form an arch, while the ends of the three arms comprising Hypostasis are glass vessels containing bromine – a chemical used as a disinfectant that irritates the skin upon contact. Due to the restricting size of the repurposed domestic spaces, the further two sculptures are exhibited downstairs. Cradle, installed on the right, consists of three sets of three glass orbs containing chlorine vapor suspended from the ceiling by steel wire, evoking a Newton’s cradle. Unlike the executive desk toy, viewers are not invited to pull back an orb to elicit momentum, as this would break the glass and release poisonous gas into the atmosphere. Chlorine is regularly used to sanitize swimming pools, but in vapor form, it can cause respiratory failure or even death. Hence, there are robust barriers stopping anyone from getting too close, dissimilar to some of the earlier non-institutional presentations of Familiars. On the left is a ladder made from metal and glass, subtitled Substance Sublimation Unit, that pierces the basement’s ceiling through to the skylight: iodine crystals fill vacuum-sealed glass cylinders held between two metal poles by an infrared heating element that sublimates the mineral into a deep violet gas. Iodine is both a life-altering irritant and, in small doses, an essential nutrient for our well-being. Interestingly, all three parts of Familiars have a recognizable functionality that is perturbed by their materiality. Despite viewing the work at a distance, one can feel the warmth generated by the infrared light as this hazardous – yet vital – substance is transformed into a pleasing hue of purple.

Hamad Butt, “Hypostasis,” 1992

The duplicitous nature of these substances is inherent to the conceptual underpinnings of the installations: danger and pleasure are confused through the potentially harmful materials’ re-signification as objects of aesthetic gratification. The confusion seen in these installations is masochistic. [3] In his essay “Apprehensions,” Butt astutely grappled with Leo Bersani’s “Is the Rectum A Grave?” (1987), where Bersani posited that heterosexist vitriol toward homosexuality – exacerbated by the onset of AIDS – arose from a hatred of anal sex as it ruptured the “masculine ideal” of “proud subjectivity.” [4] Bersani consequently argued that gay men could counter the “murderous judgement” against them through sexual intensity, asserting that sex could be “thought of as our primary hygienic practice of non-violence.” [5] In advocating for the very act that was so vehemently despised, Bersani urged for an embrace of anal sex’s supposed deplorability rather than seeking redemption. Moreover, for Bersani, the masochistic nature of penetrative sex – and its self-shattering affect – is prophylactic. [6] In other words, sex’s ability to unbound the subject is a means to realize that the notion of proud subjectivity is illusionary, which, in turn, inhibits retaliatory violence: for one does not seek to regain power but lingers in that sense of powerlessness. When encountering Butt’s installations, one is reminded through the work’s hazardous potential that this so-called masculine notion of proud subjectivity is pure fantasy. Looking around while spending time with the artworks, one sees others similarly affected by the theoretical danger the installations present; one sees that everyone in the room is equally vulnerable, uniformly shattered, yet they loiter.

“Hamad Butt: Apprehensions,” IMMA, Dublin, 2024

The first of the final three galleries displays an array of early works by Butt, including etchings, charcoal drawings, and paintings produced before 1987. In most of these works, male figures are depicted in numerous positions, often contorted in extreme poses with their genitals exposed. One year before he was diagnosed with HIV and started at Goldsmiths, Butt produced the etching Mortal Passion (1986), of a line-drawn figure in front of a mirror about to pierce themselves in the eye with a dagger. The figure appears to rest the sharpened point of the blade against their eye, toying with the idea of self-inflicted bodily harm. The curators note in the catalogue’s foreword how they sought to read these early works by Butt “backwards” by drawing connections between works such as Mortal Passion and the later installations Transmission and Familiars. [7] What links these particular works is a notable flirtation with violence. In the later installations, however, this flirtation is no longer flattened and contained in a two-dimensional picture but enacted upon the viewer. There is a recorded interview between the artist and his brother Jamal Butt in the closing room, where the latter asks about the former’s departure from painting and drawing to installation. His response claims that he realized he could produce work “where the audience will always be making the drawings for me” such that it becomes “an endless, everchanging film and all you have to do is be in that space.” [8] With Butt’s installations, we, the viewers, become the figure resting the blade against our eye in the mirror.

“Hamad Butt: Apprehensions,” IMMA, Dublin, 2024

At first, it may seem untenable to leave the exhibition with a sense of optimism when exposed to danger, even when it is purely theoretical. The implausible nature of the verse quoted at the outset, this promised “rosy glow,” is a key to considering the politics that undergird Butt’s installations, particularly how he aesthetically responded to the AIDS crisis. There is no agitprop in his work. In the final room, however, there is a notebook on display detailing Butt’s plan for an artwork explicitly addressing the representation of people living with HIV in the media at the time. [9] While Butt undeniably responded to the ensuing HIV and AIDS epidemics across the globe, his installations do so in a much more nuanced, even esoteric way. The installations materially embrace the structural negativity ascribed to penetrative sex – a negativity often associated with queer people writ large – at the height of the AIDS crisis, rather than seeking redemption. Butt does not expose us to danger for a cheap thrill. Instead, the artwork captivatingly shatters us. The rosy glow one leaves with arises from apprehending an instrument of non-violence.

“Hamad Butt: Apprehensions,” Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, December 6, 2024–May 5, 2025; Whitechapel Gallery, London, June 4–September 7, 2025.

Elliot Gibbons is a writer, curator, and doctoral candidate based in Brighton, United Kingdom.

Image credit: Courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), photos Ros Kavanagh