Raheleh Filsoofi's toothy performance at Untitled Art fair

On Thursday under Untitled Art fair’s waterfront tent, the Nashville-based gallery ZieherSmith staged a meditative performance by the Iranian American ceramicist and educator Raheleh Filsoofi. Bite, originally conceived in 2021, consists of the artist dressed in black clothes and a grey headwrap sitting on her knees atop an ornate rug, ritualistically biting the edge of a raw clay vessel in contemplative silence. In the process, she reimagines her body as a tool for crafting new narratives. Juxtaposed with artist Onajide Shabaka’s adjacent installation Totem, Long Journey Home (2024), presented at the fair by the Miami non-profit Oolite Arts, Filsoofi’s performance took on a compounded urgency informed by the diasporic immigrant experience.