Rijin Sahakian uses writing, artmaking, and research to examine the relationship of images and rhetoric to expansive experiences of violence, primarily focused on American and multinational warmaking in Iraq. Her work has
appeared in Warscapes, Hyperallergic, Camera Austria, the Beirut Art Center, Artforum, the Venice Biennale, Jadaliyya, Darat al Funun, Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, Ashkal Alwan, the Wellin Museum of Art, MoMA PS1, e-flux Journal, n+1, Videobrasil, World Records Journal, and various artist projects and monographs. She has received fellowships from Fulbright and Art Matters, and is currently an Open Society Art Fellow. She received her MA in Art and Politics from New York University and founded Sada, an arts education initiative for Baghdad-based students, operating from 2010-2015. A commissioned artist for documenta fifteen (2022), she developed an anthology film, Sada [regroup].
She has lectured 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 served as advisory board member to the Network of Arab Alternative Screens and the Humanities Institute, University of California, Davis.
Contact
rijins@gmail.com