Sa’rah Melinda Sabino, Dream Girl

September 9 - October 22, 2022

Dream Girl by Portland-based Sa’rah “Rah" Melinda fields an intimate conversation between the artist and her grandmothers, neither of which she was ever able to meet. In this dialogue, Rah imagines what it would be to live out the dreams of her ancestors. Presented at One Grand Gallery this exhibition incorporates selected multimedia works in the form of painting, sculpture and installation that each dig into the artist's heritage and invite viewers to wonder what it means to dream out loud. Blue painted arches across the main wall hold each of Rah’s vivid, circular self-portraits. Each rendering of her likeness means to reimagine a context that pairs the celebration of femininity with a reckoning of one’s personal history. Rah paints herself into these revelatory moments with bright colors evocative of traditional Moroccan patterns, while wearing American basketball jersey’s as converted hijabs. This pointed visual blending brings to a head the cultural relevance the artist’s upbringing in the US has had in her artistic practice. In “Wrapped in the American Dream (Magic)”, Rah gazes at the crowd through a blue and black striped Orlando Magic jersey, a Champion logo above her eyes which remain the only part of her body exposed to the public. Across the bottom of the canvas is the Arabic word for “girl” - as in, a daughter; a granddaughter; as in, Rah herself. The command of the audience’s attention through this intentional focus here expresses the artist’s fluid and internal journey of enmeshing her two varied worlds. Within these paintings, she envisions herself as a child, playing dress-up to live up to and beyond her grandmother !s dreams.

This expression “dream girl” comes from an intentional distancing from objectification - instead of becoming someone else’s dream, this works calls on the feminine power of dreaming and the tenderness of that action. As the daughter of an immigrant and a first generation American, Rah never had the opportunity to connect with a deeply important part of her family. Pulling from this emotion, she uses the liberties afforded by the American Dream to make her mark and to make work highlighting the internal tension of being mixed race and existing in a threshold between two worlds. Three painted basketballs sit as relics within the larger context of the space, displayed on silk pillows to hint at their fragility while the exteriors resemble centuries old artifacts. They rest on wood cargo containers designed to mimic realistic export crates. Printed in Arabic on each of those basketballs are the words that evoke the delicacy of dreaming - fertility, love, and a safe place. Dream Girl thus prevails as a transportation into Rah’s realized space, with an intention that the show itself feel as if it has been shipped in from across the world, as if it could exist in two places at once. In this manner, the artist addresses the frailty of aspirations by voicing hers to exist loudly within the gallery. Each work has been carefully considered for its ability to sport a double life, much like Rah herself, constantly re-examining what it means to live within a profoundly entrenched cultural crossroads.

Sa’rah Melinda Sabino is a Moroccan-American multimedia artist from Boston, MA, currently residing in Portland, OR. As a mixed-race woman, Rah’s work explores identity through the charged lens of identity. As a result of belonging to two differing worlds, her work aims to create a space for those who might similarly experience a tension of disparate races. That space hopes to inspire a feeling of belonging, claiming space within the duality and encouraging community.
 



@sneakhersole
rahrahsworld.com

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