BLEEDING BORDERS
by Amin Rehman, Curated by Manar Abo Touk

November 5 - 29, 2025

Curator’s talk: Friday, November 7 at 4 pm
Opening Reception: Friday, November 7, 5–8 pm

BLEEDING BORDERS

Amin Rehman’s artistic skills, visual eye, and aesthetic style brought together a feeling of nostalgia, an educational lesson in history, creativity and diversity of mediums, activism and reclamation of languages, and a simplicity to storytelling that illuminated a beautiful culture and the suffering it endured at the hands of the colonizers. Before the exhibition ended, my 70+ year old neighbor visited the gallery to view the exhibits on display. Within the seven spaces we had at least four different exhibitions. She mentioned how she was moved by the Bleeding Borders exhibition, that she connected to the stories of the women, and that she came back with her grandson to view the exhibition again so he could read out the text and labels to her. It was a beautiful moment that an exhibition about a place so far away, a region that is marred by negative stereotypes, a place with so much history and culture, with its many layers, being shown in a small town in Alberta had touched a 70-year-old woman and her grandson and provided her more context and history and knowledge and allowed her to connect with people in a different continent—one she never had a chance to visit, a community she would not have had a chance to speak to. The stories in this exhibition within the beautiful aesthetic of the photographs, the installations, and the flow of the space allowed her body and mind to connect with them. The power of art and exhibition storytelling is healing!

Bleeding Borders: In the Shadow of Routes Long Traveled

Bleeding Borders traces the ancient and ongoing movement of people, languages, and power across Pakistan’s borderlands with India, Iran, and Afghanistan. Drawing from historical trade routes and the aftermath of colonial rule, Amin Rehman explores themes of migration, displacement, and cultural resilience.

Through mixed media, video, and text, this exhibition moves from deep historical memory to the present-day political and environmental realities of the region. Rehman’s use of fragmented language and layered imagery challenges colonial narratives and gives form to the stories that survive at the margins.

- Manar Abo Touk (2025), An extract from the exhibition catalogue Bleeding Border’s curatorial essay by Manar Abo Touk. Full text in the Bleeding Borders catalogue. More information at redheadgallery.org

Curator’s biography

Manar Abo Touk (she/her) is a Syrian-born Canadian independent curator and PhD candidate in Art History at Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her doctoral research explores contemporary Syrian art in the diaspora, with a focus on memory, displacement, and anti-violent image-making. With over a decade of experience in the international arts sector, she has curated more than thirty exhibitions and collaborated with artists across the SWANA region, Europe, and Turtle Island. Her practice is grounded in cross-cultural storytelling and political aesthetics, and is shaped by methodologies of slowness and attentive listening. She has held positions as the Arts Manager and Curator at Al Riwaq Art Space in the Kingdom of Bahrain and Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, Treaty 8, Alberta.