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Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum-FIU opens the exhibition “Sa’dia 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”
Rehman explores themes of exile and environmental crisis through a variety of artistic mediums
The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum-FIU has opened its newest exhibition titled “Sa’dia 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.” Created by multidisciplinary artist Sa’dia Rehman, this exhibition reflects the artist’s insistent and urgent inquiry into family histories of place and displacement.
In this new body of work, Rehman explores their family’s displacement in 1974 from Khar Kot, an area near the Indus River in northern Pakistan. The construction of the Tarbela Dam resulted in 135 submerged villages and the permanent relocation of more than 96,000 people, including the artist’s grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.
The title of the exhibition draws from the last two lines of a poem by Rehman’s sister, Bushra, referencing stories and connections to Pakistan. The work takes the form of the Indus River, which runs through their homeland, and is apparent in its title, materials, and mediums. Rehman uses rebar, rust, clay, denim, cotton rag paper, moving images and sound to capture the shape and history of the Indus, telling the story of time’s passage and human crisis in Pakistan.
The multidisciplinary work, including a collection of drawings, textiles, works on paper, sculpture and a video, is a result of three years of researching information, reading archives, interviewing people and creating the artwork. Rehman describes the result as a “window, doorway, or portal” to or through somewhere in between here and there and something reimagined, caught in the interstices among shifting geographies.
“We are delighted to exhibit Sa’dia Rehman’s work which feels relevant to our shared focus on displacement and humanitarian concerns,” said Jordana Pomeroy, director of the Frost Museum. “As an artist and a teacher, Rehman’s approach to complex ideas asks questions that hover in the air. As a laboratory for experimentation, the Frost serves as a nexus for innovative ideas that connects disciplines as Rehman’s art does so successfully.”
Hailing from Queens, New York, Sa’dia Rehman has previously exhibited work at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Queens Museum, Columbus Museum of Art, The Kitchen, Kentler International Drawing Space, Center for Book Arts, Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU and Pakistan National Council of the Arts. Rehman is currently a resident at Harvard University’s Art Lab.
This exhibition is organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts and curated by Director of Learning & Public Practice Dionne Custer Edwards in collaboration with Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions Kelly Kivland and Film/Video Studio Curator Jennifer Lange.
In this new body of work, Rehman explores their family’s displacement in 1974 from Khar Kot, an area near the Indus River in northern Pakistan. The construction of the Tarbela Dam resulted in 135 submerged villages and the permanent relocation of more than 96,000 people, including the artist’s grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.
The title of the exhibition draws from the last two lines of a poem by Rehman’s sister, Bushra, referencing stories and connections to Pakistan. The work takes the form of the Indus River, which runs through their homeland, and is apparent in its title, materials, and mediums. Rehman uses rebar, rust, clay, denim, cotton rag paper, moving images and sound to capture the shape and history of the Indus, telling the story of time’s passage and human crisis in Pakistan.
The multidisciplinary work, including a collection of drawings, textiles, works on paper, sculpture and a video, is a result of three years of researching information, reading archives, interviewing people and creating the artwork. Rehman describes the result as a “window, doorway, or portal” to or through somewhere in between here and there and something reimagined, caught in the interstices among shifting geographies.
“We are delighted to exhibit Sa’dia Rehman’s work which feels relevant to our shared focus on displacement and humanitarian concerns,” said Jordana Pomeroy, director of the Frost Museum. “As an artist and a teacher, Rehman’s approach to complex ideas asks questions that hover in the air. As a laboratory for experimentation, the Frost serves as a nexus for innovative ideas that connects disciplines as Rehman’s art does so successfully.”
Hailing from Queens, New York, Sa’dia Rehman has previously exhibited work at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Queens Museum, Columbus Museum of Art, The Kitchen, Kentler International Drawing Space, Center for Book Arts, Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU and Pakistan National Council of the Arts. Rehman is currently a resident at Harvard University’s Art Lab.
This exhibition is organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts and curated by Director of Learning & Public Practice Dionne Custer Edwards in collaboration with Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions Kelly Kivland and Film/Video Studio Curator Jennifer Lange.