Bahar Behbahani’s artwork succeeds in being both political and non-prescriptive. Her personal histories and their intersections with culture, transnationalism, and ecology are etched into her work, both figuratively and sometimes literally. Water binds me to your name is curated by Klaudia Ofwona Draber in partnership with KODA. This exhibition presents works anchored in the politics of water stewardship, and dares to reclaim a new mythical form of architecture that holds the water ecosystem.

Informed by Behbahani’s childhood in Tehran, Water binds me to your name is an extension of themes explored in her earlier museum exhibitions, such as Let the Garden Eram Flourish, at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, and Mother River, a video series at the Asia Society Museum in New York City.

Water is central to Behbahani’s artistic practice. She notes that when children learn to read in Farsi they all begin with the word water, which is comprised of the first two letters of the Persian alphabet (Ab). In telling this story, Behbahani mused, “I wonder if this impacts our relationship with water.”

The artist’s primal childhood memories are likewise rooted in the home garden in Tehran that once belonged to Behbahani’s grandfather, who named the artist ‘Bahar’, meaning ‘Spring’. His garden was an otherworldly refuge for her to play hide and seek, to learn how to count and draw, and from which family gatherings and poetry readings transpired; it was her responsibility to water the garden’s roses, a prophetic gesture captured in an old photograph. ‘All the memories are around the central pool… under the cypress trees,’ she recalled.