About the Artist

Sohorab Rabbey

Sohorab Rabbey is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher from Bangladesh. Sohorab grew up on the banks of the Turag River and his visual practice stems from his engagement with the river community and research into the political ecology of water bodies. Drawing on Indigenous Hydroontology from field research and the local wisdom of ancestral knowledge: by the act of remembering, restoring and reclaiming – he finds his forms and materials, primarily through installations, assemblage and sculptures that bleed into other mediums. In the context of a tidal delta, a fragile mangrove ecosystem in South Asia and a crucial climatic zone of anthropocene – he sets up para-fictional installations to decode the relationship between ecological catastrophes and imperial extraction mechanisms, cultural amnesia in a post-contamination landscape and loss of biodiversity. He re-examines colonial legislative systems by distorting colonial archives, legal documents, infrastructures, herbarium images and cartographic maps. Sohorab addresses the accessibility and scarcity of natural resources as well as the rituals, ecological care and resistance that agrarian river communities perform for the ecosystem. Sohorab advocates for the legal rights of indigenous peoples and more-than-human commons.

Sohorab is currently an Artist in residence at Künstlerhaus Vorwerkstift in Hamburg, Germany. He was a Finalist of Samdani Art Award 2023, Dhaka Art Summit. He received a DAAD Promos and ASA grant for studying with MA Art and Ecology at the Goldsmiths, University of London. He obtained a MFA in Painting with distinction from HFBK Hamburg, Germany. Sohorab is the recipient of UFJ Tokyo-Mitsubishi Scholarship for artistic excellence in 2015. He has widely exhibited his works through group and solo projects across Europe, South Asia and the UK including MK&G museum in Hamburg, Shilpokola- National Art Gallery in Dhaka, Bangladesh.