CURRENT EXHIBITION
REHAB EL SADEK: RE:COLLECTION
August 1 - October 5, 2025
Tulsa Artist Fellowship - Studios
109 MLK Jr. Blvd E. Tulsa, OK 74103
First Friday | October 3 | 6:00 - 9:00 PM
To schedule an appointment, email info@tulsaartistfellowship.org or call (539) 302-4855
Tulsa Artist Fellowship is pleased to present Re:Collection, a solo exhibition featuring awardee Rehab El Sadek, on view from August 1 through October 5, 2025, at Tulsa Artist Fellowship Studios.
“A room filled with ancient Egyptian sarcophagi. Centuries-old writing in faded ink. Mummified bodies resembling wood and leather, delicately wrapped in gauze. Personal belongings intended to accompany the dead to the next world now presented as artifacts. These haunting images from a 1997 visit to the original Cairo Museum in Tahrir Square have shaped my personal life and artistic methodologies.”
Re:Collection is a sculpture series that serves as a profound exploration of personal and collective memories. Drawing inspiration from the ancient Egyptian methods of her ancestors, El Sadek meticulously wraps her sculptural objects in gauze and applies naturally derived pigments, aiming to protect and conserve not just the forms themselves, but the cherished recollections they hold. These works are a tapestry of memories woven from the artist’s life experiences and the places she inhabited before and after her immigration to the United States. A collection of recollections.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
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).