We are honored to host Raheleh Filsoofi as our current Artist in Residence at Robert Lange Studios. Her time here in Charleston—working, researching, creating—coincides with her solo exhibition At the Edge of Arrival at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (August 22 – December 6, 2025).
Please go check it out.
Who Is Raheleh Filsoofi?
Raheleh Filsoofi is an itinerant, interdisciplinary artist, feminist curator, and community advocate whose work blends clay, sound, video, poetry, and performance to probe themes of migration, memory, land, and belonging.
Born in Iran and currently based in the U.S., Filsoofi’s personal journey as an immigrant deeply informs her art practice. She often speaks of herself as a “collector of soil and sound”—grounding her installations in place through the very materials of the earth, and inviting the listener into layered sonic landscapes. Her accolades include the 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellowship Vanderbilt University+1 and the 2023 Gibbes Museum Society 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art. Charleston City. Additionally, she is Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Vanderbilt University and holds a secondary appointment at the Blair School of Music.
Her Process: Clay, Dust, Sound & Memory
Filsoofi’s work often begins with site-specific materials. She collects clay or soil from particular places, letting the material itself carry the weight of geography and history. One of her signature strategies involves transforming clay into dust paintings—a gesture that shifts clay from its usual solidity into a more ephemeral form. In At the Edge of Arrival, such dust works underscore how presence, absence, and erosion intertwine in narratives of migration and displacement.
Filsoofi’s work often begins with site-specific materials. She collects clay or soil from particular places, letting the material itself carry the weight of geography and history. One of her signature strategies involves transforming clay into dust paintings—a gesture that shifts clay from its usual solidity into a more ephemeral form. In At the Edge of Arrival, such dust works underscore how presence, absence, and erosion intertwine in narratives of migration and displacement.
Her ceramic vessels, too, become carriers of memory. In some cases, she references historic South Carolina pottery traditions—invoking the legacy of David Drake (also known as “Dave the Potter”) as a way to connect with yet complicate the region’s past. Sound and video play a vital role in her installations. The land is not silent, in her view—it has its own voice. By overlaying ambient recordings, poetic language, and moving image, Filsoofi opens up a space of “listening” to what the ground can carry and what the ear can excavate. Her works are often multilayered and immersive: visitor movement through space, shifting light, and temporal shifts all contribute to the experience.
Residency at Robert Lange Studios: A Conjoining of Places
Here at Robert Lange Studios, Raheleh is using our facilities as a home base—accessing clay sources near Charleston and experimenting with dust and vessel work in dialogue with Charleston’s particular soil and environment. While we’ve hosted many visiting artists, having someone as conceptually engaged and technically adventurous as Raheleh is a rare opportunity for cross‑pollination and inspiration.
Just now I was talking to her about her process and the adventures clay has taken her on. Throughout her residency, she’s been in dialogue with local communities, regional histories, and the built environment of Charleston. Her presence here is not merely as a maker, but as a researcher, listener, and connector.
At the Edge of Arrival at Halsey Institute
Filsoofi’s exhibition at Halsey, At the Edge of Arrival, brings together dust paintings, vessels, sound, and video to explore migration, land, and memory from her particular vantage as a Middle Eastern immigrant woman living in the American South. The show positions her migration from Iran in dialogue with the forced migration of enslaved Africans to Charleston, asking how different histories of arrival resonate and echo across the terrain. In one of the exhibition essays, Katie McCampbell Hirsch writes of “dust poems”—works that gesture toward fragility, erosion, and the sedimented nature of memory. The show invites visitors to think about arrival not as a fixed state but as something transitional, porous, and generative.
An Artist Talk is scheduled for October 18, 2025 at 2:00 PM in Maybank Hall (Room 100) at the College of Charleston, open to all.
Why This Matters for Our Studio & Community
Having Raheleh with us at Robert Lange Studios isn’t just an honor, it brings a particular kind of energy and dialogue:
• Our local artists and staff get a front‑row view into her method: how she mines meaning from earth, how she lets sound and silence converse.
• Her practice encourages thinking across media, to see clay not only as object but as archive, not only as form but as gesture.
• She draws threads between place, displacement, and memory, inviting everyone who encounters her work to reflect on what it means to belong, to arrive, or to witness arrival.
And this is why I love having the residency space here in Charleston!
