Raheleh Filsoofi
Raheleh Filsoofi
Assistant Professor in Ceramics
S Family Dean’s Faculty Fellow in Race, Racial Justice, and Social Justice
Office Hours: Wednesdays 11a.m.-12 p.m. and by appointment
130 Ceramics at E. Bronson Ingram Studio Building
Phone: 305-299-9395
Raheleh.filsoofi@vanderbilt.edu
Website
Creative Pedagogy
Curatorial
Education
MFA, 2014 Ceramics, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL.
BFA, 1999 Studio and Craft, Al-Zahra University, Tehran, Iran.
Specialization
Interdisciplinary Practice and Pedagogy, Ceramics
Biography
Raheleh is 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, including the recent interactive multimedia solo exhibitions Inh(a/i)bited, an interactive multimedia installation in Spinello Project Gallery in Miami (2020), and The Overview Effect, an interactive Multimedia Installation in Betty Foy Sanders Gallery at Georgia Southern University (2019). 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. Her multifaceted curatorial project ‘Fold: Art, Metaphor and Practice’, which engaged over 20 artists, scholars, and educators in exhibitions, performances, and lectures over a period of one year in Edinburg and McAllen, Texas, has been a milestone in her professional career.
She has been the recipient of grants and awards, including the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. 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.
Selected Recent Exhibitions
Solo Exhibition by Invitation, Inh(a/i)bited, Interactive Multimedia Installation, Curated by Anthony Spinello, Spinello Project Gallery, Miami, FL. (2020)
Solo Exhibition by Invitation, The Overview Effect, Interactive Multimedia Installation, Betty Foy Sanders Gallery, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA. (2019)
Group Exhibition by Invitation, Halal, Ceramics and Light in Work Up, Curated by David Christopher Terry and Sharon Louden, C24 Gallery, New York, NY. (2019)

Selected Awards
The Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation Grant, in Collaboration with Dr. Katherine McAllen for Curatorial Project “Uncovered Space” in International Museum of Art and Science and University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, McAllen, TX (2020)
The 2021 NCECA Helene Zucker Seeman Curatorial, Research, and Critical Writing Fellowship for Women. (2021)
“The Outstanding International Female Faculty Award”, University of Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX. (2019)
Distinguished Iranian American Woman of the Year Award, In Appreciation for Outstanding Accomplishments and Positive Impact to the South Florida Community, Iranian- American Foundation, Coral Gables Club, Miami, FL. (2018)
South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship Award for Visual and Media Artists Regional Juried Application. (2017)
Selected Press, Publication
Teaching Art From Distance Could have Benefits, Hyperallergic, March 25, 2020.
Whitney jones, Featured: Raheleh Filsoofi’s ‘On Transcending the Inh(a/i)bited Space’ Exhibition, Cfile Edited by Garth Clark, January 16, 2019. https://cfileonline.org/feature-raheleh-filsoofis-on-transcending-the-inhabited-space-exhibition/