Sahar Khoury (b. 1973) is an Oakland-based sculptor who has worked in the Bay Area for nearly 30 years. Her sculptural practice includes ceramic, metal, paper mache and found, everyday objects. Sahar Khoury: Weights & Measures — her largest solo exhibition — comes at a moment of national recognition for Khoury as one of the most experimental and vital sculptors working in Northern California today. 

Coming from a background in cultural anthropology, Khoury finds opportunities in objects that are cast aside, using them as a way to think about how we ascribe value to people and places. In this exhibition, she explores grief and mourning through a surreal lens where found and discarded materials repeat and morph through the process of casting. These grouped forms function as metaphors for the collective weight of mourning versus the individual experience of grief.

The exhibition’s subtitle, Weights & Measures, conveys multiple meanings. It refers to the burdens our bodies and psyches carry, the passage of time and musical tempos. At its most literal, it evokes systems of value and order. The exhibition asks: What are the conditions that make something, or someone, worth more or less than another? What are the historical, societal or political imperatives that create these systems? In this way, Khoury’s world speaks to the less tangible kinds of weights we bear, the shared and singular emotional burdens of family, history and war. It asks, in Khoury’s words, “What comes with loss, and what is gained?”