Raheleh Filsoofi is an itinerant artist, feminist curator, and group advocate. Utilizing clay and sound as her major expressive mediums, her work revolves round themes of motion, immigration, and social activism. Her artwork goals to disrupt the borders that exist between us and seeks a extra inclusive world, illuminating and difficult insurance policies and politics.
On the Fringe of Arrival, on view on the Halsey Institute of Up to date Artwork in Charleston, South Carolina, brings collectively a constellation of works — mud work, argillotypes, vessels, sound, and video — to discover migration, land, and reminiscence from the angle of a Center Jap immigrant lady dwelling within the American South. On this exhibition, open via December 6, Filsoofi engages with the layered histories of place, the supplies drawn from it, and a poetic dialogue between her personal migration from Iran and the pressured migration of enslaved Africans who arrived in Charleston. By way of this lens, she displays on our shared presence within the land — not via similarity, however via resonance throughout time, materials, and reminiscence.
Raheleh Filsoofi, “The Inh(a/i)bited Space” (2016-2025), ceramics, wire, and sound
In her audio and video work, Filsoofi goals to render the land not as a silent backdrop, however as an lively, sonic archive alive with the textures of wind, water, and human expertise. On this spirit of immersion, Filsoofi created a guide of mud poetry, impressed by the exhibition’s location adjoining to the Halsey Institute Library. Books are one other vessel of reminiscence, language, and reflection. By way of poetry, Filsoofi offers voice to in any other case unspeakable threads of thought. This concept carries via her ceramic vessels, which honor the legacy of David Drake (Dave the Potter), an enslaved African American artisan who lived and labored in Edgefield, South Carolina. Drake inscribed his pots with poems that wove resistance into utility and embodied the novel potential of clay as each file and refusal, objects that talk even underneath circumstances designed to silence. In utilizing clay as legacy, Filsoofi asks the land to inform its story — her story, our story, the tales of all of those that moved throughout it.
Having lived and labored throughout 9 Southern states during the last twenty years, Filsoofi’s expertise informs her exploration of geography not solely as a bodily panorama however as a layered archive of labor, displacement, and survival. This exhibition presents a poetic excavation, a mapping of arrival and absence, a listening for the sounds that persist in soil. It honors the individuals, crops, and tales rooted on this area, whereas asking: What connects us throughout distinction? What stays on the fringe of arrival?
To be taught extra, go to halsey.charleston.edu.
Raheleh Filsoofi, “The Imagined Landscape” (2025), video
Raheleh Filsoofi, “At the Edge of Arrival, Dust Poems” (2025) argillotype (clay paint), paper, mud, glass
Raheleh Filsoofi, “At the Edge of Arrival, Dust Poems” (2025), argillotype (clay paint), paper, mud, glass
