Hydrotrauma

Sohorab Rabbey

Hydrotrauma, Sucker fish and the epistemicide of the Bengal Delta

A Lecture Performance and Art Talk by

Sohorab’s research examines water bodies in the Bengal Delta as historically situated living epistemic subjects, beyond material resources to be extracted as determined by the Anthropocene. It analyzes how colonial hydrological infrastructures, legal regimes and scientific practices from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries reconfigured riverine landscapes and erased Indigenous systems of knowledge from them. Focusing on char lands and riverine communities in the lower Teesta basin in Bangladesh, the study traces how land–water separations, water-control policies and hydrodamming produced long-term displacement, ecological instability, ecological rupture, and epistemicide.

Sohorab Rabbey

Sohorab Rabbey (1994, Dhaka; based in Hamburg, Germany) is an artist and researcher from Bangladesh. Sohorab grew up on the banks of the Turag River, and his visual practice stems from his engagement with the river community and embodied research into the political ecology of the water bodies.

Sohorab is currently a resident artist at Künstlerhaus Vorwerkstift in Hamburg. Sohorab was a visual arts fellow at Künstlerdorf Schöppingen and won the prestigious Working Grants for Artists from the Hamburg Ministry of Culture and the Arts, Germany in 2025. He is a DAAD Promos and ASA grant recipient for studying with the MA in Art and Ecology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Rabbey has widely exhibited his works through group and solo projects, conducted workshops, and guest lectured across Europe, South Asia, and the UK, including the forthcoming Borås Art Biennial 2026 in Sweden. Sohorab presented his works at Kunsthaus Hamburg (2025), Kunst und Gewerbe Museum Hamburg (2024), Hypha Studios London (2025), Dietikon Projektraum-Zurich (2024), National Gallery of Art, Dhaka (2023), Redcar Contemporary, Redcar, UK (2023), along with a solo show at Raum links-rechts in Hamburg (2022), among others.