An artist talk with Filsoofi will be held on Tuesday, January 30 at 6pm at Flagler College’s Ringhaver Student Center’s Virginia Room, 50 Sevilla Street, downtown St. Augustine. This event is free and open to the public.
Raheleh Filsoofi is a visual artist and curator. Through interdisciplinary, site-based, and conceptual methods, Filsoofi considers critical narratives about movement, immigration, and social activism. Clay and sound are the nexus of her practice and act as expressive mediums, engendering new narratives through diverse aesthetic strategies such as multimedia installations and immersive sound performances. Her art disrupts the borders that exist between us and seeks a more inclusive world, illuminating and challenging policies and politics.
During her residency, Filsoofi will engage with Flagler College, St. Augustine, and the surrounding community through class visits and critiques, and will conduct local site visits. A critical component of her practice consists of processing clay that she has dug up at locations in which she has worked and traveled. The clay resurfaces as finished ceramic objects included in installations such as A Transient’s Paradox, a project Filsoofi created for the 2022 exhibition Fragile:Earth at Grounds for Sculpture.
Filsoofi’s current and recent exhibitions include Imagined Boundaries, an interactive multimedia installation at Gibbes Museum in Charleston, SC (2023-2024), and Only Sound Remains, an interactive multimedia installation at the Sharjah Biennial 15, Thinking Historically in the Present in Sharjah, UAE (2023). Imagined Boundaries was also realized as a multimedia installation, consisting of two separate exhibitions, which debuted concurrently in a solo exhibition at the Abad Gallery in Tehran and group exhibition Dual Frequency at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Florida in 2017.
The artist’s project, 'Listening: The Fourth String,' in collaboration with musician Reza Filsoofi, introduces an interactive instrument and platform called ShahTár. Through public performances, it highlights the contributions of the silenced Iranian musician and Sufi, Moshtagh Ali Shah, to music while emphasizing the power of listening to drive community engagement and promote social change.
Filsoofi has been 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 in the Department of Art at Vanderbilt University and holds the secondary appointment at the Blair School of Music. She received her M.F.A. in Fine Arts from Florida Atlantic University and a B.F.A. in Ceramics from Al-Zahra University in Tehran, Iran.
CEAM programming is supported through generous funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and a grant from the Dr. JoAnn Crisp-Ellert Fund at The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida. This program is sponsored in part by St. Johns County Tourist Development Council.
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The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum as well as Ringhaver Student Center are accessible buildings. If you are a person with a disability and need reasonable accommodations, please contact Phil Pownall at 904-819-6460. Sign Language Interpreters are available upon request with a minimum of three days’ notice.
For more information about programming and upcoming events, please visit www.flagler.edu/ceam, follow on Instagram and Facebook @crispellertart or contact Julie Dickover at 904-826-8530 or crispellert@flagler.edu.
