Mina Zarfsaz

Mina Zarfsaz, in conjunction with her residency exhibition GAG ACT at the Esther Klein Gallery, will publish a book to further document, synthesize, contextualize and archive the exhibition content. Working with 3 other women artists based in Philadelphia, the book will connect scientific and sociocultural metaphors; investigate ethically intelligent ways of being and becoming; and unpack humanity in the digital age and the cultural connotations of human/machine interactions. This grant will support with finishing funding for the opportunity, particularly around publication and compensation of contributors

Mina Zarfsaz (ACG'17) has been awarded the 2018 Performing Artist Residency with Asian Arts Initiative.

Tinkering Materiality: a tale of longing and belonging is a study of a domestic task -- e.g. food preparation -- turned ritual choreography. The piece explores the contact point between body, object, and environment through the lenses of social and political devastation and displacement. Using a lens that centers immigration, displacement, and acculturation, the work will aim to blur concepts of ability, disability, and adaptability by interjecting impediments to a series of tasks for able bodies to open a platform for a conversation around the emotional and mental detrimental forces that are imposed on immigrants and humans at large systemically.

Mina created A Corporeal Orchestration of Sounds, an interactive installation of fragmented bits of Iranian rebellious songs and calibrated electronics—tuned like an instrument to the participants’ movements. The system of sensors, speakers, and projectors measured the impact of spectators' movements, which then reconstructed the dismantled fragments of the music. As they triggered the sensors, the bodies of the spectators co-composed the rhythmic content through their movements with others.

The second piece of her project, Dead Ringer, is an installation that speculates and re-speculates the reality of sound and sound-reflection by emphasizing the experiential conditions of mirroring and the differences that emerge in repetition. The project excerpts text from Gertrude Stein where, drawing on her technique, she relies heavily on the use of repetition as a sensemaking mechanism.The piece also taps into the artist’s inspiration of Attar of Nishapur, a celebrated literary master of Persian literature who in some ways assures that the individual self is but an illusion, and all truth resides in self-annihilation. Dead Ringer creates a space for tuning one’s eyes and ears to the repetitions of elements that bring one in contact with the world through sensorial probing where seeing is more like touching than depicting. And, like touch, hearing is a form of visual perception.