Viscera::Poetics
For Tehran-born, Chicago-based, artist Ziba Rajabi’s residency at Princeton University, Rajabi led participants through a multi-sensory, participatory “non-verbal poetry” workshop. Ziba provided each participant with a workbook she designed for us. She then primed us to meditate with a particular memory, and to sit in the memory paying attention to the sensory dimensions of it. Instead of words to describe or illustrate the memory, we used tactile materials to compose visual poems from the rich visual dictionary Ziba provided consisting of pre-cut shapes, colors, sizes, textures, and materials.
We also hosted a public conversation between Ziba and the::sense::archive founding director, Ava Shirazi, about Ziba’s process, poetics, and the sensory dimensions of accessing the visceral. Rajabi is a painter focusing primarily on site-specific installations, textiles, and reimaginations of digital mediation in contemporary life.
Ziba Rajabi :: Spring ‘25
Staying with the visceral became a practice that slowly unspooled our sense of “memory.”
Rajabi is a painter focusing primarily on site-specific installations, textiles, and reimaginations of digital mediation in contemporary life.
