Morehshin Allahyari with Shirin Fahimi

Taragh is a sound of stamping one’s foot on the ground.

Taragh
Taragh
Taragh
Taragh
Taragh
Taragh

With its repetition, Tarigh (path) is created.

For their work-in-progress performance, Morehshin Allahyari and Shirin Fahimi channel the revelation of the jinn figure Aisha Qandisha and Ilm al-raml (Geomancy–science of the sand) as their method for telling and opening doors towards other futures. Aisha Qandisha is one of the most honored and fearsome jinn in Islam. She is known as “the opener”. When she possesses humans, she does not take over the host but rather opens them to an outside–to a storm of incoming jinn and demons, making them a traffic zone of cosmodromic data. Ilm al-raml refers to the foresight that the Earth holds within itself. Through its practice, this foresight is revealed and the future is seen, known, and breached.

Part of the performance art series Refiguring the Future.

3D scanner provided by Eyebeam.

Our quarterly calendar listed an erroneous date for this performance. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

About the Artists

Morehshin Allahyari is an artist, activist, and educator born and raised in Iran and currently based in New York City. Her modeled, 3D-printed sculptural reconstructions of ancient artifacts destroyed by ISIS, titled Material Speculation: ISIS, have received widespread curatorial and press attention and have been exhibited worldwide. She is the recipient of the leading global thinkers of 2016 award by Foreign Policy magazine, and her work has been shown at the Queens Museum, the Tate Modern, Venice Biennale di Archittectura, and Centre Pompidou, among many others. Allahyari is currently developing a new body of work on digital colonialism and ‘re-Figuring’ as a Feminism and de-colonialist practice, using 3D scanners and 3D printers as her tools of investigation. Researching monstrous and djinn female figures of Middle Eastern origin, Allahyari devises a narrative through practices of magic and poetic-speculative storytelling, re-appropriation of traditional mythologies, collaging, meshing, scanning, and archiving.

Shirin Fahimi is a Montreal-based Iranian visual artist and co-founder of Taklif Collective. She received her BA in fine arts from Slade School of Fine Art (University College London) and her MFA from Concordia university.

Fahimi works with video, diagram, and archival material, and her current research is concerned with the performative aspect of Sihr (Magic) and divination in Islamic culture as a source of transformation, empowerment, and hope.

Her work has been exhibited at Vidéographe with Dazibao (2017), Middlesbrough Art Weekender (2017), SAVVY Contemporary (2016), Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (2016), and IGNITION 11, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery (2015).

Image Credit

Morehshin Allahyari, She Who Sees The Unknown: Aisha, still Image from hd video, image courtesy of artist, 2018.