Exhibition: Wex Artist Residency Award recipient to unpack displacement stories in exhibit

Miki Toyota
Fri, 10 Feb 2023 02:45:50 +0000
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Sa’dia Rehman’s “There isn’t a stone I don’t remember” is on display at the Wexner Center for the Arts from Feb. 10 to Jul. 9. Credit: Courtesy of Sa’dia Rehman

The Wexner Center for the Arts will explore life stories of Pakistinians displaced from their homes to Columbus.

Multidisciplinary artist Sa’dia Rehman, who uses they/them pronouns, will hold a solo exhibition, “the river runs slow,” for the Wexner Center’s Winter/Spring 2023 exhibitions, opening Friday.

Titled after a poem by their sister Bushra Rehman, “the river runs slow and deep and all the bones of my ancestors / have risen to the surface to knock and click like the sounds of trees in the air” explores themes of displacement, grief, memory, activism and migration.

The displacement of their family from Pakistan in 1974 following the building of the Tarbela Dam on the Indus River “was the starting point” for the exhibition, Sa’dia Rehman said.

“The government moved down the Indus River, pushing away several communities and villages across many generations,” Sa’dia Rehman said.

Sa’dia Rehman said they went to Pakistan in 2022 to research the new project.

Beyond their ancestral history, Sa’dia Rehman’s work portrays the cultural significance of land and engages the neglected displacement crisis of Pakistinians through dialogues with community members, relatives, scientists and environmentalists, according to the website.

Their work evokes a spirit of perseverance and a sense of being displaced from their homeland, Dionne Custer Edwards, the director of Learning & Public Practice at the Wexner Center who curated “the river runs slow”, said.

“Sa’dia’s work has evolved overtime and will continue to evolve during the exhibition,” Edwards said.

Originally from Queens, New York, they moved to Ohio to pursue a Master of Fine Arts at Ohio State. They received the Wex Artist Residency Award twice, which recognizes exceptional creatives who exemplify the Wexner Center’s mission, according to the website.
Composed of drawings, sculptures, textiles, observational sketches and project videos, the tales of displacement and loss embodied within their work come from individual lives. The exhibit is a result of three years in residence and ongoing collaborations with artists, curators and practitioners in the center’s community, Edwards said.

“I often work with material that can be erased or disappeared or changed. I’m still searching and exploring the idea of ephemeral material,” Sa’dia Rehman said.

Materials used in the exhibit include discarded denim from their sister’s jeans, cotton rag paper, rebar, wood, sound and moving imagery.

For Sa’dia Rehman, art is “a tool for empowerment” and portraying marginalized histories to provide a space to make their voices heard has been at the core of their creative endeavor, they said.
The exhibit preview is Feb. 10 from 6-8 p.m. and the exhibition will run through July 9.