Rana Begum exhibition: 'Reflection'
Rana Begum uses light, space, and color to create transformative artworks that are completed by the viewer’s experience of them. This exhibition, Begum’s first museum survey in the U.S., unites numerous series of works made over the course of her career. Arranged in seven distinct groupings, this selection demonstrates the breadth of her practice, highlighting how she expands on legacies of abstraction, Minimalism, and Op art through a contemporary global lens. Begum’s work harnesses geometry and light effects to dynamic ends, embracing modern industrial materials such as automobile light reflectors, safety tape, metal or glass panels, and even chain link fence segments. By recontextualizing these elements in imaginative ways, the artist produces formally compelling installations with a range of subtleties.
Many of Begum’s works shift almost imperceptibly as viewers circulate past them, with their pristinely painted surfaces effusing a luminosity that seems to radiate and encompass the museum’s walls in their glow. Our embodied experiences of these poetic artworks highlight the complexities of human perception and the nuanced way we each view the world around us. The intricate spatial and visual act of engaging with Begum’s work initiates transformation, evolving from the aesthetic realm to that of wonder — an encounter with art that allows us to reach toward the profound.
Reflection is organized by SCAD Museum of Art chief curator Daniel S. Palmer.
About the artist
Rana Begum (b. 1977, Sylhet, Bangladesh; lives and works in London) focuses on the interplay between light and color, blurring the boundaries between sculpture, painting, and architecture. Her use of repetitive geometric patterns — found both within Islamic art and the industrial cityscape — is inspired by childhood memories of the rhythmic, daily recitals of the Qur’an. Influenced by the geometric abstraction of Minimalism and Constructivism and the work of artists such as Agnes Martin, Donald Judd, Jesús Rafael Soto, and Tess Jaray, Begum’s work ranges from drawings, paintings, and wall-based sculptures to large-scale public art projects.
Recent solo exhibitions include Dappled Light, Concrete at Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates; The Box Plymouth, U.K.; Pitzhanger Manor, London; and Mead Gallery, Coventry, U.K., as well as Rana Begum, Kate MacGarry, London; Ordered Form, St. Albans Museum + Gallery, St Albans, U.K.; Infinite Geometry, Wanås Konst, Knislinge, Sweden; A Conversation with Light and Form, Tate St Ives, Cornwall, U.K., following the Tate St Ives Porthmeor Artists’ Residency Programme; Space, Light, Colour, Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham, U.K., and Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, U.K.; and The Space Between, Parasol Unit, London.
Begum curated the exhibitions Opposing Forms at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, U.K., and Occasional Geometries at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, London. Group exhibitions include Life Is More Important Than Art, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Desert X, Palm Springs, Fla.; Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh; Simplicity of Form: Unfolding Abstraction, Bermuda National Gallery, Hamilton; Rhythm and Geometry, Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, U.K.; Creative Folkestone Triennial, Kent, U.K.; Actions. The image of the world can be different, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, U.K.; Tribute to Sol LeWitt, Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, the Netherlands; and the 11th Gwangju Biennale, Korea. A comprehensive monograph titled Rana Begum: Space Light Colour was published by Lund Humphries in 2021. She was elected a Royal Academician in 2020.