As part of our Associate Studio Programme, we were excited to have Rehana Zaman visit us for an extended conversation in April 2018. Given Rehana’s practice, and some of the conversations that were being had in the studio, we decided to step away from the normal ‘crit’ structure that had occurred in visits before Rehana, and instead have an open conversation without too much presentation of individual works. This lead to a lengthy, (3 hour) informal conversation in which Rehana posed a number of interesting wider questions to the group.
We spoke at length about (but not limited to) things surrounding power structures, education, dropping out of the art world and collaborative practice. Rehana was engaging and offered us real insight into the ‘stuff’ that surrounds the making, particularly in terms of the politics of working with other people, something that we talked a lot about when thinking about her piece ‘tell me the story Of all these things’ which involved her working with her sister. We spoke about what it means to be an artist working with groups, and navigating and subverting art spaces that often feel exclusive, which Rehana spoke of in relation to her work at Goldsmiths in setting up the Women Of Colour Index Reading Group and with her current project for the Liverpool Biennial. Isabel Alsina-Reynolds
