Sa’dia Rehman:
the river runs slow
Sa’dia Rehman (they/them), a two-year Wexner Center Artist Residency Award recipient, will share a new body of work exploring memory, grief, and migration, as well as the multiple histories and geographies that can be triggered by a single event.
The displacement of Rehman’s family in 1974 from their village in Pakistan by the building of the Tarbela Dam on the Indus River serves as a beginning for their project. A poem by Rehman’s sister, Bushra, provides the exhibition’s title.
Beyond their family history, Rehman looks toward global history of land and water, and narratives of passages and home, conducting expansive archival research and dialogues with relatives, community members, scientists, and environmentalists.
For Rehman, the Wex’s unique, wedge-shaped gallery space acts as a vessel for a selection of drawings, sculptures, textiles, works on paper, and video generated from their research, a project that evokes archiving, as well as a sense of being suspended between homeland and migration.
The river runs slow is curated by Director of Learning & Public Practice Dionne Custer Edwards. A gallery guide will include a text by Custer Edwards and a dialogue in text between Rehman and curator, writer, and educator Regine Basha.
For more information: Wexner Center for the Arts and Sa’dia’s website