Solar Salutations: Fereshteh Toosi | A/A - Online

Fereshteh Toosi designs experiences that pose questions and foster animistic connections through encounter, exchange, and sensory inquiry. Their artwork often involves documentary processes, oral history, and archival research. Immersive performances are produced in conjunction with small sculptures, short films, installations, scores, and poetry, often situated outdoors in gardens, parks, and waterways.

In 2022, Fereshteh is in a residency program with Solar Power for Artists. In 2021, they participated in the Montréal/Miami New Narratives Lab hosted by the National Film Board of Canada, O Cinema, MUTEK, and FilmGate Interactive. They also earned a Knight New Work 2020 award for their project Oil Ancestors, and a Miami Live Arts Lab Alliance residency to develop Metaphysical Hotline, a performance by telephone for an audience of one. Water Radio, a series of contemplative canoe and kayak outings, was supported by The Ellies Creator Award in 2018.

Fereshteh is an educator, learner, and an artist of the Iranian and Azeri diaspora, currently in Miami-Dade on stolen lands still stewarded by the Miccosukee and Seminole people, and previously by the Calusa and Tequesta tribal bands. South Florida is home to many Indigenous people, as well as Black, Brown, and Caribbean people whose ancestors lived and worked on the land against their will, while enslaved, or under threat of violence. Fereshteh’s work relies on the extractive and colonial infrastructure of digital computation which uses electronics and servers, all of which are made possible by occupying places where other beings live, or once lived.