Current Exhibitions
March 7 – 29, 2026
Esha Sadr
Absence of Us
Absence of Us is an interdisciplinary, long-term project that transforms used garments into narratives of memory, identity, and resilience. Esha Sadr reconsiders clothing not merely as a consumer product, but as a second skin—objects that carry personal histories and traces of absent bodies. The exhibition explores her experience as an immigrant, present in the U.S. while absent from her home country.
The work unfolds in four parts. A large hand-sewn installation forms a human-geographical map of garments donated by immigrants. Mixed-media sculptural works on canvas preserve fabrics in resin, bronze, gold leaf, and orchid flowers. A circle of raw materials invites visitors to contribute garments for future transformation. Video works layer participants’ voices, connecting intimate stories to broader narratives of migration, displacement, and social freedoms.
Through Absence of Us, viewers are invited to reflect on what we carry, what we leave behind, and what endures, transforming everyday clothing into lasting monuments of memory and identity.
About the Artist
Esha Sadr is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and researcher based in Washington, DC. Her practice spans sculpture, performance, video, installation, and text to explore themes of migration, collective trauma, memory, and resilience. Since 2012, Sadr has exhibited and performed internationally, including in the United States, Iran, France, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Morocco, and beyond. Her long-term project, The Memorable Hands Museum, co-created with Ramin Etemadi, honors notable diasporic figures through cast sculptures and video portraits.
Her work has been featured in institutions such as the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Akademie der Künste (Berlin), Kadıköy Sineması (Istanbul), Gunnersbury Park Museum (London), Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris), and DC Arts Center. She has presented lectures and talks at the University of Bonn, Charles University Prague, ITI (Berlin), and the Interweaving Performance Cultures Center at Freie Universität Berlin.
Sadr has published four books and over 40 essays on art and cinema. She is a member of the Washington Sculptors Group and has participated in numerous international panels and residencies.
Artist Statement
My work exists at the intersection of loss and resilience.
Every day, we destroy something beautiful.
Every day, we create something beautiful.
That’s who we are.
As a woman shaped by life across borders, I explore the emotional weight of migration, memory, and identity. Working across sculpture, installation, performance, video, and text, I use documentary strategies to trace the fragile architecture of personal space—what we carry and what we leave behind.I often incorporate worn garments, stitched textiles, and ephemeral materials to embody absence, fragility, and transformation. These tactile structures become maps of movement, trauma, and longing—insisting on the stories that resist erasure. Through intimate acts of making, I transform personal memory into collective experience. My practice creates quiet spaces for reflection and confrontation, preserving what is disappearing and giving form to the invisible borders that shape our lives.
Public Programs
Artist Talk with Esha Sadr
Natasha Sachdeva
Will this entanglement ever resolve?
In a deeply personal inquiry, Will this entanglement ever resolve? unveils Natasha Sachdeva’s layered engagement with the realities of growing up and living within a middle-class family in New Delhi, India. What begins as an inward process of self-discovery and introspection gradually expands into a broader commentary on the ways in which society defines, regulates, and confines women’s bodies—situated within a South Asian context, yet resonant on a universal scale. Her figures—often voluminous, unposed, distorted, and unapologetically raw—challenge conventional ideals of beauty and grace, dismantling ingrained expectations of restraint, decorum, and conformity. Through these forms, the artist asserts an unequivocal right to joy, sensuality, and self-expression at every stage of a woman’s life.
As the works question tradition, expectation, and autonomy, they also probe the cultural codes that shape gendered experience. Natasha situates her practice within a collective framework, drawing inspiration from mothers, friends, and fellow artists whose everyday negotiations of identity, agency, and belonging mirror and amplify her own.
About the Artist
Natasha Sachdeva (b. 1993, New Delhi) holds a BFA (2015) and an MFA (2017) from Amity University, Noida. She has participated in key workshops, including the Kochi Biennale Foundation’s Masters Studio Practice (2018) and Lalit Kala Akademi’s Women’s Day Camp (2021). Her work has been exhibited consistently in India, including at the Abir First Take Awards Exhibition (2022), Bikaner House, New Delhi, The Inner Self: Portraits in Multiple Mediums (2022), On The Threshold of Time: Unseen (2020), NADA Miami 2025 (USA), and the India Art Fair (2023, 2025) with Art Heritage, New Delhi. She has received several honours, such as the Abir First Take Award (2022), Delhi State Award for Painting (2018), and the Lalit Kala Akademi Scholarship (2020–2021). In 2021, she was selected by the French Institute in India to present her work at La Nuit des Idées (Theme: Space and Time) and was featured in Harper’s Bazaar India Art Issue (2022) as a notable emerging artist.
Artist Statement
My journey as an artist began with a small series of paintings in 2018 that gave me a sense of liberation and contentment as I dealt with a difficult and unpleasant relationship with my own body that began with a sudden weight gain caused by Polycystic Ovarian Disorder. All these years later, my practice has grown and is rooted in an ongoing exploration of the female body, limited not just to its physicality, but also to the numerous layers that lie beneath the surface—emotional states, public perception, notions of ‘beauty’ and ‘grace,’ and societal expectations. It is a form of self-discovery, a means to examine different life stages — growing older, transitioning from being single to being married and now divorced — and an opportunity to examine what other women go through in a middle class, South Asian context. Turning a gaze upon myself and the immediate society requires a level of honesty and risk-taking that often translates to a rawness in the visuals I make. I feel a sense of empowerment when people walk away from my work with a feeling of ‘being seen,’ ‘accepted,’ and ‘confident’.
Public Program
Conversation with Natasha Sachdeva
Abol Bahadori
Hybrid Baroque
We view the world through our eyes, limited by a narrow color spectrum and depth of vision. But what if we had compound eyes like insects, sonar like dolphins, and used other senses to enhance our vision? In his exhibition Hybrid Baroque, Bahadori explores new sensoria by abstracting and recomposing elements of nature, architectural structures, and human figures.
Inspired by Western Baroque architecture and music, and the rich traditions of Eastern miniatures, the works in this exhibition combine grandeur and movement to evoke a feeling of awe by blending abstract color fields with recognizable elements. Bahadori invites the viewers to visualize the world through a prism of broken objects and grids.
About the Artist
From his early beginnings in his hometown of Tabriz, Azerbaijan, Iran, to his teenage years sketching alongside masters in Paris, Bahadori’s story is rich in art experience. He graduated as a textile designer and obtained his master’s in digital application design for textiles from The University of Manchester, UK. Bahadori settled in his current home in the DC area in 1992, where he studied under the founders of the Washington Color School. A prizewinning hybrid media colorist painter, recognized as one of the 51 living and working artists who have shaped, inspired, and impacted the DC art scene — as per the 2024 District 51 Exhibit — Bahadori’s multicultural upbringing is evident in his vibrant, abstract works. Currently, he works at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, where he began, and continues to, develop his unique contemporary series. He is frequently featured by The Washington Post, local media and at DC auctions—WPA, Hickok Cole, and Transformer.
Artist Statement
Art is a doorway to the subconscious, and color opens the path. I’m drawn to the space between the known and the unknown—the recognizable and the abstract. My artistic process is a journey through the colors that appear to my eyes, much like composers hear the notes in their ears. The process is spontaneous. It occurs beyond the realm of self and intellect. Forms come in to represent the colors. More than an artist, I consider myself a medium to provide the observer (including myself) access to the unknown or the forgotten. My art is successful only when viewers see their own story in it and connect to themselves and the universe through it. Listening to what others see in my paintings, I am continually surprised by our shared collective memory.
Public Programs
An Artist Talk with Abol Bahadari
Saturday, March 21, 1pm
Featured solo artist Abol Bahadori will lead an artist talk about his exhibition Hybrid Baroque. He will discuss his inspirations, ranging from Western Baroque architecture and music to the rich traditions of Eastern miniatures, and invite audiences to step into his unique, abstracted worlds of color.
Free to the public (A suggested donation of $10)
