Sohorab Rabbey (b. 1994 in Dhaka, BD) is a multi-disciplinary Bangladeshi Artist and researcher works between Hamburg, London and Dhaka.
He grew up on the bank of river Turag, in a mufassil near Dhaka, Bangladesh. His visual practice is mostly the result of his engagement with the river community and the research on art and river ecology: mainly installations and sculptures that bleeds into image making, performance, workshops, writings and other mediums.
Situated within the context of deltaic tidal basin, a delicate mangrove ecosystem, and a crucial zone of climate urgency, his installations decode the relationship between ecological catastrophes and imperial extractive mechanisms, cultural amnesia in the post-contamination landscape and the loss of biodiversity.
In his projects, 'Almanac of an eroded land’, He created a collaborative Para-fictional installation with Tie-Dye techniques learned and perfromed with local community in hand loomed textile with historically charged organic materials such as Indigo and Turmeric, and created sculptural objects with them inspired by the architectural blueprints of Hydro-electric Dams in the Teesta river. Which were then installed in a barren land with sound composition, recorded in and around the riverbeds. By altering infrastructures into unstable, translucent and malleable entities, he reclaims the power to the unvoiced.
Indigenous water ontology and an act of re-membering, re-storing, and re-paring inform his form and material findings. He questions colonial archives, herbarium images and cartographic mappings and re-examines legislation systems. With a particular interest in local wisdom from ancestral knowledge episteme, he seeks out significant materials that connect the past and future relationship of art and regenerative ecology. He parallels his artistic practice with artisanal processes and draws inspiration from the resistance and protest displayed by local communities against extractivism in order to protect their land, water, and spirits, as well as the rituals and ecological care they demonstrate for the ecosystem. By addressing concerns regarding the accessibility and scarcity of natural resources for river communities, he advocates for the legal rights of indigenous peoples.
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 is a DAAD Promos and ASA grant recipient for studying with MA Art and Ecology at the Goldsmiths, University of London. He holds a BFA from HFBK Hamburg, Germany. He got the UFJ Tokyo-Mitsubishi Scholarship for academic excellence in 2015. He has widely exhibited his works through group and Solo projects across Germany, Austria, Bangladesh and the UK. He is also a published researcher in the field of aesthetic theory and regenerative ecology. His works has been collected by public and private institutions.
