Artist
Rashin Fahandej
Rashin Fahandej is a transdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and assistant professor of emerging and interactive media at Emerson College. Her projects center on marginalized narratives and foster the role of media, technology, and public collaboration for social change. A proponent of “Art as Ecosystem,” she defines her projects as “Poetic Cyber Movement for Social Justice,” where art mobilizes a plethora of voices by creating connections between public places and virtual spaces. She is the founder of “A Father's Lullaby,” a multi-platform co-creative project that highlights the role of men in raising children, and their absence due to racial disparities in the criminal justice system in the United States. Fahandej has served as a 2017 Boston Artist-In-Residence with the Mayor's Office of Art and Culture, a 2018 Public Art Resident at Boston Center for the Arts, and a fellow at MIT Open Documentary Lab. She is the 2019 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow and the 2019 recipient of the James and Audrey Foster Prize, with her immersive installation on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.
Visit websiteAbout the Work
A Father's Lullaby is an ongoing research and creation project by Rashin Fahandej that highlights the role of lullabies as a form of resistance and love. The project addresses the disproportionate absence of fathers in communities of color due to the system of mass incarceration in the United States. Through immersive installations, video, and sound, Fahandej weaves together personal narratives of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated fathers, their families, and their communities. The lullaby becomes a symbol of connection across physical separation — a sonic bridge between parent and child that transcends prison walls. The project invites viewers to consider how systemic injustice disrupts the most intimate of human bonds: the act of singing a child to sleep.