Ashfika Rahman: Of Land, River, and Body
At Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi, Of Land, River, and Body marks the first solo exhibition in India by Bangladeshi artist Ashfika Rahman. Bringing together photography, installation, sound and moving image, the exhibition is rooted in a textile sensibility that foregrounds stitch, thread and touch as tools of witness. Golden silk thread recurs throughout the works, used to bind and intervene in images, transforming textile labour into an act of resistance that insists on presence ,while also seeking to heal, uplift and reassert dignity.
Files of the Disappeared Case - 1. Print of archival paper & golden silk thread with lightbox. 2020.
The exhibition brings together three interlinked projects—Than Para: No Land Without Us, Behula These Days, and Files of the Disappeared—each shaped through collaboration and remembrance. Working closely with communities affected by displacement, environmental vulnerability and enforced silence, Rahman transforms pain into testimony. Bells touched by villagers, letters embroidered by riverine women, and portraits stitched with gold thread form an intimate archive built on care and solidarity. Gods are invoked, heroes reanimated, and local languages centred, allowing cultural memory to surface alongside political critique.
Behula Those Days. Installation with green cotton fabric and gold thread with metal frame, 2024.
Rahman’s practice sits deliberately between art and documentary, yet it is through material intervention that her concerns become legible. Grounded in archival research and long-term conversations with marginalised communities in Bangladesh, her work reflects a sustained engagement with land, displacement and the politics of visibility. Rivers, bodies and territories recur as contested sites, shaped by environmental precarity, state violence and collective denial. The abuses Rahman addresses are widely ignored or rendered invisible within dominant narratives; her works refuse this indifference.
Than Para Series. Old radio with sound and golden thread. 2025.
The symbolic weight of gold is central to this language. Gold is not ornamental but juridical, evoking systems that prioritise law and authority over lived experience. In several works, mouths are sewn closed with gold thread. Handwritten notes reach outward, attempting to communicate what can no longer be spoken. A radio is silenced by tightly wound gossamer strings. Stitch becomes both wound and remedy, marking harm while holding space for care.
Behula these Days. C-type print on archival paper and golden silk thread. 2025
This material sensitivity recalls Roland Barthes’ assertion that every photograph is a “certificate of presence.” Rahman extends this principle through stitch. Thread anchors the image, binding testimony to surface and insisting that these lives existed. Her installations function as affective archives, compelling the viewer not simply to look, but to acknowledge.
Central to the exhibition is Rahman’s notion of “archiving for the future.” Influenced by her mother’s work as a social worker, she foregrounds listening as labour and textile processes as a means of holding memory—fragile, luminous and enduring. In Of Land, River, and Body, survival itself becomes an act of protest.
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Further Information:
Of Land, River, and Body is on view now at Vadehra Art Gallery, Defence Colony, New Delhi, until 24 January 2026.
Vadehra Art Gallery
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Image Credits:
Lead: Than Para (No Land Without Us) 838 temple bell (brass), golden silk threads and metal frame. Ashfika Rahman, 2025
All further images as credited in photo captions.