DissemiNation sheds light on the experiences of migrants and the challenges they face in navigating the bureaucratic and interrogatory processes of the state. It reveals the complexities of belonging in a world where national borders and cultural differences are increasingly contested. By drawing on the theories of Homi Bhabba, the film offers a critical …
“Milk—or our existence in proximity with milk—presupposes a lexicon of aphoristic language that applies to many social situations: to skim, to condense, to homogenize, to lactate, to express, to culture, to curdle, to separate. Across digital platforms, however, milk has rapidly soured into a symbol of white supremacy. In her expanded practice, Eleh’s experimental work …
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SuperNova is a multidisciplinary video installation informed by Rah’s experience as a Canadian-Iranian exilic and diasporic artist. Featuring a series of characters that she has performed as over several years including Fatimeh, Oreo and Coco, these carefully conceived personas pointedly deconstruct ethnic and gender stereotypes. In SuperNova, the three fictional personas appear together for the first time as …
Solo Exhibition, Articule, Montreal, September 25-October 25, 2020 This iteration of SuperNova installation consisted of two separate channels–one channel was dedicated to the contestants and hostess and the other to the judges and audience. The viewer was invited to sit between the two channels and watch a seamless interaction between both channels. Photography by Guy …
The goal of this project is to shed light on the issue of self-immolation involving young women in the Middle East and Central Asia, through the lens of survivors’ stories. The vast majority of those undertaking the act are young, married women and the majority of self-immolations involving women in this region occur in the …
The Xenofuturist Manifesto enumerates a set of tools for hybrid beings whose desire leads to a sense of spatiality, temporality and futurity outside of diaspora. Rejection suffuses the diasporic experience and prevents the union of subjects who share the condition. The manifesto imagines conduits through which subjects can avert the rejection and isolation that creates …
SuperNova Portal, 10x10x15 foot structure, commissioned by CUAG and on view until December 8th 2019 The structure was inspired by the state of liminality. In anthropology the limen is described as a threshold and a transitional middle period during rite of passage. In the SuperNova, Coco departs from the game show and travels through a …
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In this exhibition, Rah uses social apps as a “relational sketchbook” where she performs as Oreo to critically examine nationalism in the digital age by appropriating hashtags, visuals and symbols used by nationalists online. Following hashtags such as #aryangirls #aryanbrotherhood #88 (an abbreviation adopted by neo-nazi to promote the salute “Heil Hitler”), the six images …
“Rah Eleh introduced The /Da (2018), a proposal crossed by her experience of the diaspora and the forced adoption of the linguistic ideologies of our country. With her eminently choreographed performance and the precise execution of coordinated gestures, Rah Eleh denounced her compulsory literacy. The action referred to the reminiscences of her arrival in Canada, …
Proshat Kalami: In 2012 you performed a tea ceremony in protest outside the Iranian embassy in Canada. What was the genesis of that piece and how did you situate your body as Rah within the location of culture and performance of culture that your character was performing for, I am assuming, mostly Canadian audience? Rah- In …