Tender Bits: Q & A with Rex Delafkaran
Rex (Alexandra) Delafkaran is a San Francisco, California transplant living and engaging as an interdisciplinary artist and dancer, curator and administrator in Washington, DC, working out of Red Dirt Studios. A San Francisco Art Institute alum, Rex has worked and exhibited in many galleries including the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. She is currently a participating guest writer at local online art writing publication DIRT, and curating projects of her own.
How does your involvement in performance art affect your creation of visual arts, and vice versa?
My practice has come to teach me that they both must coexist. I have danced and moved creatively my whole life, and that I think directly affects all the art I make and the way my ideas manifest. What does the piece feel like to make, hold, move; how do these ideas and this research manifest physically in the world, in my body? The two practices flow in and through each other dynamically. It’s actually a really sweet experience to realize “oh ohh this isn’t supposed to be a sculpture, its a performance!”
How did you come to focus on language and identity as a theme throughout your works and across mediums?
After having moved across the country from California to DC, I began studying Farsi. I started attempting to write in partial English and Farsi as a practice, which was unexpectedly thrilling, and those began transforming into movement scores, which then became performances. Those elements of text then made their way into the ceramic sculptures I was working on, taking the notions of physical utility and intimacy and relating them directly to language. It kinda blew my mind, how much it all was coming together. Then in 2016 when the first iteration of the Muslim ban came to surface, the anger and disappointment and confusion I felt in response was completely overwhelming. Ultimately, I think it was a noticeable catalyst in this direction of my work. I began researching the history of Iran and the areas where my family is from, and began looking for more information about the relationship between the US and Iran, ancient Iranian art and cultural practices that appear in both places. Language is the intermediary in this process of questioning the relationship between my sexuality, cultural background, familial history, and hyphen American identity, and the relationship those have to my immediate and extended community. I’m in an excavation of sorts, a dig, and I am standing on the edge of a large pit with a pile of dirt next to me and clay under my nails.
You mention seeking out means of starting conversations and provoking thought with your works. What kind of conversations do you wish to initiate with this installation?
I think the extremely engaging and powerful aspect of working in conceptual art is that while I have been circling in my own little world about the work and its connections to art and culture and reality, there is room for so much dialogue. I want people to tell me how they feel about it—what do all these symbols do together? Do the chains feel violent to you? What is your relationship to flags? How do you feel about ceramic phalluses strapped to cinder blocks?
You recently participated in a cultural exchange trip supported by the Sister Cities program. What were your goals for the trip? Did you accomplish your goals? Of these, was there anything in particular you would have liked more time to continue pursuing?
The Sister Cities program was an incredible experience for me as person and as an artist. Going into the trip I was the most excited to film performances in historic areas in response to their architecture, and I really feel like I was able to get some exciting documentation from those moments. What I was surprised by was how moving the historically charged architecture and public spaces were. At the end I found myself wanting to make more site-specific, longer movement explorations. We also saw so many artists’ studios, I was surprised as to how inspired I was to make more sculpture when I got back to the US. The incredible attention to history and craft was impactful and certainly affected my perspective on what it can mean to be an “artist” in other parts of the world.
What aspects of your own cultural experiences and their impact on your work were you most excited to share with your counterparts in Rome?
It was so exciting and fruitful to share my experience as a queer Iranian American person with some of the artists we met. They expressed a lot of curiosity about why my identity felt like such a site for investigation for me, and that made me pay particular attention to who each artist is, what their relationship is to Rome culturally and socioeconomically. I wish I had more time to get an understanding of their relationship to the middle east and Islam actually, especially based on their government’s stance on refugee asylum and immigration. Seeing how other people work was so eye opening, the experience makes me want to talk more and collaborate with international artists absolutely.
What, if anything, surprised you most about the contemporary arts and artists of Rome?
I think the focus on craft and tradition. Hearing about the effects of living in an art historical site like Rome for young contemporary artists was fascinating and unfamiliar. That experience seems to clearly influence the forms and conceptual nature of the work there. It was surprising that the concept matter that seems so omnipresent in the contemporary arts that I see in the DC art scene had such a different aesthetic and priority in Rome.
Based on your recent experience in Italy, what roles, if any, do language and identity serve in the work of artists you met with in Rome? Has this affected your own strategies for sparking communication through art?
Absolutely. I think a lot of my work revolves around language already, and being in Rome surrounded by a literal different language, as well as different visual physical language was very affecting. I found that visual and physical language was the most engaging! The physicality of grand frescos, epic sculpture, fountains, piazzas, papal chapels—these felt like they were communicating so much. It sparked a reminder as to the power of curated and public spaces, and its relationship to the bodies and identities around and within them!
What are some new projects or directions in your work that you are excited to explore? Has your experience in Italy had a noticeable impact on your current practice or the work you have planned for the foreseeable future?
I am really excited about the flag series that is featured in my solo exhibition Tender Bits, “Flags for when you don’t know where you are.” It feels like I’m on the cusp of a new body of textile work based on that series, and I am really looking forward to working larger on these upcoming pieces as well. I also am hoping to explore some new ways of working with sculpture—I feel like I am still in awe of the reverence I experienced in public space in Rome, as well as the way the artists spoke about their craft and the aesthetics of beauty. I want to see what happens to the work I am making when I reframe or reteach. This applies to movement as well, in my dance work I think these ideas are already surfacing in new ways.
Overall, can you tell us 2 or 3 of the most significant takeaways from your experience in Rome?
It is possible to make room for awe and splendor in art alongside criticism.
Physical experiences of international spaces can be listened to as richly and intently as an artist talk, new friend, or unfamiliar languages.
I was reminded the power of collaboration and dialogue, and the importance on regularly stepping out of my artistic, political, and social comfort zones.