About Me

Kia ora, Salaam, Nomoshkar and Vannakam.

My name is Sahana Rahman. I am a Painter, Textile and Community Artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), Aotearoa, New Zealand. My practice brings together embroidery, painting, drawing, and textile work, shaped by my Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan Tamil heritage and my life as a queer brown person in Aotearoa.

I work with traditional South Asian techniques such as shisha embroidery, a 17th-century practice where mirrors are stitched into cloth and Nokshi Kantha, a traditional Bengali practice of storytelling through embroidery. The slow, repetitive nature of hand-stitching is central to my process. It becomes a meditative act and a way of holding memory and cultural knowledge through the body.

Mughal miniature paintings deeply influence my art style. I'm fascinated by the attention to fine detailing expressed through the vibrant pigments of gouache. The way these works capture so much within a single painting resonates with my own process, as I tend to have many ideas and visions that I feel compelled to express within one composition.

In my work, you will often see many flora/ fauna. As someone who grew up around nature these are my immediate inspirations, often carrying symbolism. Flora/ fauna carry across borders as symbols of migration, resilience, and belonging. These motifs allow me to explore identity, queerness, diaspora, healing, and spirituality without needing to explain them outright.

Born in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington) and raised in the hilly suburb of Newlands. I grew up in a multicultural community, which influences my work. I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) from Massey University in 2022, then moved to Tāmaki Makaurau in 2023 to pursue my arts career full-time. Since then, my work has been shown across galleries, libraries, markets, and community spaces.

Alongside my personal art practice, I believe in the power of I’m deeply invested in community-led making. I run my project called the Nokshi Kotha Workshop, drawing from a traditional Bengali storytelling practice where narratives are collectively stitched into cloth. These workshops are designed as gentle, inclusive spaces for connection, conversation, and shared creativity.

Whether creating detailed embroidered works, small sculptural objects, or prints, my intention is to make art that feels intimate, tactile, and lived-in objects that carry time, touch, and story. My work invites viewers to slow down, look closely, and reflect on the quiet threads that connect us across cultures and generations.