Biography

Raheleh Filsoofi takes a multidisciplinary approach to curatorial practice. Engaging with the unbounded potential of space and objects, Filsoofi’s practice addresses the customs that mediate everyday experiences through research, education, community-centered work and performance. Filsoofi employs a variety of aesthetic strategies and materials drawn from disparate sources to create artwork in which each medium plays its own distinct role in the overall expression, with specific interest in materials drawn from the earth such as clay, mud and dirt. A feminist curator and community service advocate, the artist engages with communities through social practice.

Filsoofi’s work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions, including Debated Narrative, Engage Projects, Chicago (2022); Artifacting, Unrequired Leisure Gallery, Nashville (2022); Inh(a/i)bited, Spinello Project Gallery, Miami (2020); On Transcending the Inhibited Space, O’kane Gallery, University of Houston Downtown (2018); and Imagined Boundaries, Abad Gallery, Tehran (2017). She has been part of group exhibitions in institutions such as Ground for Sculpture, Hamilton, (2022) 21c Museum Hotel, Nashville (2022); Southern Exposure Gallery, San Francisco (2022); Strohl Art Center, New York (2021); C24 Gallery, New York (2020); Spinello Project Gallery, Miami (2019); NCECA, Minneapolis, USA (2019); Bailey Contemporary Art Center, Florida (2017); and Contemporary Art Museum of Isfahan, Iran (2016).
Currently her work in on display at the Gibbes Museum of Art at South Carolina.

She has been a resident at Loghaven Artist Residency, Knoxville, Tennessee (2022) and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Tennessee (2022). She is the recipient of The Steinert Family Dean’s Faculty Fellowship in Race, Racial Justice, or Social Justice (2022-2024). She is the 2022 winner of the 1858 Contemporary Southern Art Award and the recipient of the 2021 Southern Prize Tennessee State Fellowship.

Filsoofi is an Assistant Professor in Ceramics at Vanderbilt University, Nashville.

She holds a BFA in Studio and Craft from Al-Zahra University, Tehran (1999) and an MFA in Ceramics from Florida Atlantic University (2014).

Born in 1975 in Tehran, she lives and works between Nashville and Tehran.

SAF participation:
Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023)

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