Artist Statement/ Biography

The foundation of Rex Delafkaran’s practice is rooted in methods and acts of translation to discover hybrid forms and functions. She troubles the uses of language to explore narratives of Iranian, American and queer identities, real and invented. Through the framework of hybridity her work translates ideas physically through live performance, ceramic, sculpture and dance. Materially Delafkaran is reconsidering the literal and cultural functions of objects and bodies, as well as embracing and exaggerating the implicit functions and failures in each. Using failure as a tool, the work forms questions and plays with interpretation. From the tensions between objects like cinder blocks and handmade ceramic vessels, or a ceramic dildo alongside an imaginary flag, the questions are the aim. Delafkaran’s interest is in the story these materials tell individually, how they change together and how to come to new conclusions when they do. Reconciling and constructing personal identity challenges notions of authenticity and cultural failure, and affects our understanding of legibility. What languages and materials do we have at our disposal to make new meaning?

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Rex Delafkaran is an Iranian American interdisciplinary artist and dancer from California, based in Washington, D.C. Delafkaran holds a degree in Ceramics and Performance Art from the San Francisco Art Institute. Using movement and objects she explores ideas of failure and hybridity among bodies, objects, identities and language. Delafkaran has exhibited and staged performances at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum (Washington, DC), Panoply Performance Lab (Brooklyn, NY), Platform Art Fair (Athens, GR), Satellite Art Fair Miami (Miami, FL), Southern Exposure Gallery (San Francisco, CA), and the Textile Museum (Washington, DC) among others. She is a recent recipient of a Warhol Foundation Wherewithal Research Grant and is the Co-founder of but, also an artist run space that sells artist made products, produces exhibitions and works with a mission of empowering artists to both self sustain and experiment. Delafkaran makes her work at STABLE Arts studio in Washington, and exhibits and performs nationally and internationally.

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