RIJIN SAHAKIAN

_ABOUT

Rijin Sahakian’s work connects creative + environmental practice, history, and public life. Drawing on archives, fieldwork, and lived experience, she examines how culture is made, remembered, and mobilized within social, physical and political frameworks. Through writing and interdisciplinary projects, she develops forms of cultural production that engage both historical inquiry and contemporary conditions. She received her MA in Art and Politics from New York University and founded Sada, an arts education platform for Baghdad-based students, operating from 2010-2015.  A commissioned artist for documenta fifteen (2022), she developed an anthology film with several former members, Sada [regroup], currently archived at World Records at NYU.

Her work has appeared in Hyperallergic, Camera Austria, the Beirut Art Center, Artforum, the Venice Biennale, Jadaliyya, Ashkal Alwan, MoMA PS1, e-flux Journal, n+1, Videobrasil, and various artist projects and monographs. She holds fellowships from the Open Society Foundations, Fulbright and Art Matters. She lectures regularly in the United States and abroad, and as visiting professor at the California Institute of the Arts. She curated the exhibitions Iraq: Reframe (Montalvo Arts Center, 2007), Shangri La: Imagined Cities (commissioned by the City of Los Angeles, 2015), and Sajjad Abbas and Laith K. Daer: City Limits (Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar, 2017). Sahakian was a research fellow at Darat al Funun in Amman, Jordan and in Beirut, Lebanon. She is a member of the Scientific Board, Faculty of Design and Art at Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, and served as advisory board member to the Humanities Institute, University of California, Davis.

Contact  
rijins@gmail.com