Raheleh is a collector of soil and sound, an itinerant artist, feminist curator, and community service advocate. Her work synthesizes socio-political statements as a point of departure and further challenges these fundamental arguments by incorporating ancient and contemporary media such as ceramics, poetry, ambient sound, and video; aiming for a holistic sensory experience. Her interdisciplinary practices act as interplay between the literal and figurative contexts of land, ownership, immigration, and border.
Her work has been shown individually and collaboratively both in Iran and the United States. Filsoofi’s ‘Imagined Boundaries’, a multimedia digital installation on border issues, consisting of two separate exhibitions, debuted concurrently in a solo exhibition at the Abad Art Gallery in Tehran and group exhibition (‘Dual Frequency’) at The Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Florida in 2017. The installations in each country connected audiences in the U.S. and Iran for few hours in the nights of the show openings.
She has been the recipient of grants and awards, including the 2021Southern Prize Fellow and South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists.
She is an Assistant Professor of Ceramics in the Department of Art at Vanderbilt University. She holds an M.F.A. in Fine Arts from Florida Atlantic University and a B.F.A. in Ceramics from Al-Zahra University in Tehran, Iran.
Work:
The past several years through my multimedia practice, I have covered a great amount of experiential, geographical, temporal, disciplinary and conceptual ground. These experiences have formed my philosophy in my studio practice and educational curriculum and focused on various issues about the human condition. I have accessed and negotiated concepts of heritage, place of origin, cultural adaptability, and orientation. My multimedia installations are deeply rooted in my cultural background and my ever-evolving identity as an immigrant, and challenge viewers to examine their own perspectives and beliefs.
Process:
I utilize different aesthetic strategies by incorporating and experimenting with materials with wide ranges of relevant applications to my subject matter. Multimedia provides multilayers of perception and interpretation, while each medium plays its own separate role in expression. Clay is the nexus from which all of my ideas emanate. It is cryptic, architectural, and the space where sound, video and light are stored to create holistic sensory experiences. Clay establishes inside and outside spaces -- private and public, inclusive and exclusive, and defines all types of boundaries.
Goal:
My goal is to create work which speaks to universal human issues. Today’s issues of immigration, borders and cross-cultural communication are interwoven with notions of identity, belonging and inhabitation. I intend for my work to raise questions and promote engagement. I want my art to be an intermediary language shared between individuals, nations, and cultures that speaks humanity.
—Raheleh Filsoofi