Raheleh Filsoofi 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. Her interdisciplinary practices act as the interplay between the literal and figurative contexts of land, ownership, immigration, and border.
Filsoofi’s work has been shown individually and collaboratively both in Iran and the United States. Her recent exhibitions include interactive multimedia solo exhibitions “Debated Narrative” at Engage Project in Chicago, and “Artifacting” in Unrequired Leisure gallery in Nashville, both of which received reviews in the Observer and Nashville Scene. She is participating in the Sharjah Biennial 15, Thinking Historically in the Present, and 2023 Tennessee Triennial. She was the 2022 winner of the 1858 Contemporary Southern Art Award and the recipient of the 2021 Southern Prize Tennessee State Fellowship.
She is an assistant professor of ceramics at Vanderbilt University and 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.
At MacDowell, Filsoofi worked on "The Meeting Place," a project that combines video art and documentary elements to create a multichannel video experience for an upcoming exhibition. The aim of the project is to dynamically visualize human geography by utilizing clay mapping, hands-on processing, storytelling, and an exploration of natural resources. She creates sketches, storyboards, and refined the narration in preparation for production later in 2023. While in residence, she shared the project with other Fellows who helped spark inspiration for another new project that will complement “The Meeting Place.” Building upon the poems and narrations from the initial project, she added a small book to the project. The book will delve into the story of the excavation, serving as a prelude to an upcoming exhibition in 2025. The exhibition will take place at both the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston and the Telfari Museum in Savannah, Georgia.
