INSTALLATION, ARCHITECTURE, LANGUAGE
REHAB EL SADEK
Rehab El Sadek is a US-based Egyptian interdisciplinary artist of Sudanese ancestry working at the intersection of installation art, architecture, and language. In a career spanning thirty years, she has exhibited and worked in seventeen countries and on four continents. In her practice, El Sadek often utilizes prehistoric materials such as gauze, wood, and earth pigments. She also employs light, shadow, and mnemonic techniques to develop work and expand the footprint of sculptural objects beyond the physical world.
El Sadek has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards. Select recent awards include: The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and Dallas Museum of Art Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Grant in 2023. In 2022, she received the Project Row Houses Southern Survey Biennial Prize. In 2021, she received the Gottlieb Foundation Grant and awards from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Texas Vignette and the National Performance Network. In 2019, she received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant supporting her first solo exhibition in North America. From 2017-18, El Sadek held a one-year appointment as the City of Austin’s first Artist-in-Residence embedded in the City’s Watershed Protection Department investigating social and environmental issues.
El Sadek’s many notable international and national fellowship and artist residencies include: MacDowell (Carnegie Foundation Fellowship, 2020); Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (2022), McColl Center (2021), Anderson Center (2023), Fine Arts Work Center (2023-24), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2024), Vermont Studio Center (2020), Art Omi (2019), BAU Institute (France, 2023); Thami Mnyele (Amsterdam, 2004), and Gasworks (London, 1998).
“The Tulsa Artist Fellowship allows me to the opportunity to create art in conversation with its surroundings and the echoes of the past. Given that so much of Oklahoma’s history is intertwined with the land itself, my plan for the residency is to develop artwork derived from the various qualities and hues found in the soil of the region. I’m excited to develop a reciprocal relationship with the Tulsa community to create work that is innovative, accessible, and meaningful.”