![]() MJ So then I imagine a large amount of time and labor was necessary first researching and then creating the works. From what I can tell there isn’t much written about it. Approximately 184 villages were drowned due to the building of the Tarbela Dam which permanently displaced more than 100,000 people, including my grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. SR The exhibition draws from my family’s displacement in 1974 from Khar Kot, an area near the Indus River in northern Pakistan. Can you give us an overview of your exhibition? MJ That takes us, geographically at least, to your show at the Wexner. I already had so much student debt, and OSU offered me a fully funded degree. ![]() I wanted space from the pressures of my home-NYC-and so in 2014 I went to Ohio State University (OSU) for my MFA. After living, working, and making art in New York City for many years, eventually I realized I needed to concentrate on my art practice. It was here where we met Shahzia Sikander, Zarina Hashmi, Chitra Ganesh, DJ Rekha, Ruby Chishti, and Jaishri Abichandani. Even when we moved to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, we had a group of families from Corona, Queens, moving together! In the late ’90s, my writer-sister, Bushra, and I joined the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC). They always found ways to move their friends into the buildings we lived in. I learned from my parents how special it is to build community. Sa’dia Rehman I started making art in a time of grief. Melissa Joseph Congratulations on your first major solo exhibition! Not that anyone has a direct path in the arts, but yours has had many capillaries. ![]() In it, they present multiple material horizons for viewers to ponder through the lens of Pakistan’s Tarbela Dam construction and the many thousands of people it displaced. For what more than the horizon embodies the expansive presence, absence, movement, displacement, growth, destruction, and ambiguity possessed by water? It is a question Sa’dia wrestles with in their current exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts. Sa’dia led a discussion and asked us to do a drawing exercise illustrating the concept of “horizon.” The subtle, profound prompt, echoing Sa’dia’s practice, generated layered, fertile conversations. But if I had squinted, I think I would have seen it it was there. Looking back at the first time we met (over Zoom during a quarantine meeting for the group Asianish), I didn’t yet know where that feeling came from or the significant role water played in their family history. When Sa’dia Rehman speaks, their words almost feel like water. ![]()
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