Built Elsewhere

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June 23, 2025

Artist Statement

Built Elsewhere
by Rim Albahrani

I keep returning to the shape of a house, not to recreate one I have known but to understand why it stays with me.

These forms are not about architecture. They are about structure – how memory holds space, and how identity settles or shifts through form. The shape of a house, for me, is both symbol and site. It carries the tension between permanence and change, between rootedness and movement. It is a space we inherit, resist, and reimagine.

This work is not about revisiting memory. It is about building from the present.

Each sculpture holds emotion. Grounded, off-center, and slightly unsettled. In parallel, the prints echo this process. They offer traces and impressions, like memories that do not need to be complete to feel real.

I think of Built Elsewhere as a way of saying:
I am not where I began, but I am still building.
What I am shaping is not a return. It is a presence.
A place to arrive, not to long for.

Curatorial Text

Built Elsewhere
Rim Albahrani

Built Elsewhere presents a series of bronze sculptures and silkscreen prints that examine the conceptual tensions surrounding home, memory, and identity within the context of diasporic presence.

Rather than reconstructing a singular place or origin, Rim Albahrani works through abstraction to propose spatial forms shaped by memory, movement, and shifting contexts. These are not representations of architecture, but spatial propositions shaped by psychological orientation and lived experience. The sculptures are grounded yet slightly off center, holding emotion through quiet imbalance. In parallel, the prints function as impressions, visual traces of structures recalled, imagined, or partially forgotten.

This work aligns with broader conversations about how space and belonging are shaped through experience, relation, and the refusal of fixed narratives. Rim Albahrani constructs meaning through repetition, open form, and the tension between structure and memory. While certain theoretical ideas may echo in the background, they are not central. It remains committed to a visual language that holds ambiguity, invites reflection, and resists the need for definition.

Built Elsewhere approaches form as a mode of reflection. It holds presence, relation, and quiet transformation. Rather than seeking certainty, the work remains open and suggests that belonging is shaped through gestures that lean, shift, and stay attentive to change. These forms trace the ongoing construction of self, memory, and place.