Take a Number: Sobia Ahmad and R.L. Martens
Take a Number artists Sobia Ahmad and R.L. Martens discuss their work in the exhibition and their interest in place and memory.
The talk takes place in conjunction with Take a Number: Artists in Bureaucracy, on view at AAC through December 18. It will take place online and is free but registration is required. Register here.
Take a Number: Artists and Bureaucracy, features seven artists who explore, co-opt, and challenge bureaucratic systems and structures. They highlight the human impact of bureaucratic institutions, from the professional relationships between artists and arts organizations, to the obscure workings of financial systems, to the violent and deadly consequences wrought by global empires. More about Take a Number.
About the artists
Born and raised in Pakistan, Sobia Ahmad moved to the U.S. at the age of fourteen. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in New York, Queen Mary University in London, and the Women Filmmakers Festival at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Her recent achievements include the Wherewithal Research Grant by Washington Project for the Arts (2020), a socially-engaged fellowship at Halcyon Arts Lab (2019), and a solo exhibition at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, DC (2019).
R.L. Martens is a transdisciplinary artist and scholar. Using trash, industrial waste, and soil as source material, their work slips between geologic and human timescales, telling stories grounded in the earth but entangled with the social. Martens’ work has been supported by Washington Project for the Arts, the NYC Urban Soils Institute’s Art Extension Service, and the Maryland Heritage Area Authority, among others. They are currently a graduate student in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky.
