Mojdeh Rezaeipour: 93 Fragments
93 Fragments was organized by DC-based artist Mojdeh Rezaeipour (they/she) and hosted by GW’s Corcoran School of the Arts & Design in Gallery 1 at the Flagg Building from November 14, 2024–February 15, 2025. The project included a group exhibition and a series of programs that bring together the creative practices and methodologies of sixteen artists, writers, and thinkers from all over the world who are in direct conversation with materials of cultural heritage. Engaging themes of restitution, reclamation, transmutation, and talismanic connection, 93 Fragments proposes a radical reimagining of stewardship that aims to transform a museum-like showcase of preserved objects and artworks into a space of revolutionary and liberatory potential.
93 Fragments is also a public iteration of research informing The Collaborative Fragment Library (CFL), a counter-institutional framework for working with artifacts, currently co-stewarded by Rezaeipour and Fargo Nissim Tbakhi. The CFL uses a library model (rather than a museum) to destabilize the processes of colonial extraction and fetishization of materials of cultural heritage, seeking to build alternative models of engagement that think differently about the past and enable these artifacts to continue living.
Visitors to the exhibition were invited to take off their shoes, sit together, drink tea, and engage with an evolving array of visual artwork, poetry, video, and fragments (material, linguistic, and otherwise) by participants in the project. This included installations and visual artworks by The Collaborative Fragment Library, Saj Issa, Tsedaye Makonnen, Jackie Milad, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, and Dima Srouji.
Free public programs included a screening of Sophia Al-Maria’s film The Future Was Desert followed by a sound bath led by artist Naoco Wowsugi (February 15, 2025) and a conversation with sociologist Dr. Cresa Pugh (March 1, 2025). Students at GW’s Corcoran School of the Arts & Design also participated in the project with Rezaeipour through courses taught by Clement Akpang, whose research interests include decolonization of museology and new expressions of resistance in contemporary African art.
Additional contributors include Ibrahim Ahmed, Jeiran Jahani, Solmaz Sharif, Nyugen E. Smith, and Jessica Valoris who are all conversation partners in the development of this project.
93 Fragments began on Thursday, November 14, 2024 with an Opening Reception featuring performances by Tsedaye Makonnen and Fargo Nissim Tbakhi.
Thursday, November 14, 2024 from 6:30–9pm: Opening Reception featuring performances by artists Tsedaye Makonnen and Fargo Nissim Tbakhi starting at 7pm.
Saturday, February 15, 2025 from 4–5pm: Film Screening of The Future Was Desert Parts I and II (2016) by Sophia Al-Maria and sound bath led by Naoco Wowsugi.
Saturday, March 1, 2025 from 12–1:30pm (Zoom): Conversation with sociologist Dr. Cresa Pugh on violent legacies of artifact looting, storytelling as a tool for resistance, and contemporary movements for restitution.
