Taraneh Fazeli

Racial Equity Fellow — 2021 Cohort | DEAL 6

A brown-skinned woman stands toward the left of the frame wearing a fitted black sleeveless dress that cuts mid-way across her thighs. She has black curly hair and looks at the camera with a slight smirk. Behind her is a landscape with a sloping hill covered in lush green grass and a bright blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds.

Co-Director

Poetic Societies

Taraneh Fazeli is an Iranian-American curator. After a decade working at arts organizations in NYC, she became an independent curator before moving to Detroit. Taraneh roots her approach to curating and accessiblity at the intersection of the disability and diasporic communities she calls home.

With Aiko Fukuchi and Owólabi Aboyade, Taraneh co-founded Relentless Bodies, a creative disability justice collective. She is a co-Director of Poetic Societies, which focuses on transnational celebratory cultural events to help participants regain ancestral knowledge lost due to migration, forced displacement, processes of enslavement, or colonization.

Taraneh is currently working on a book rooted in her exhibition Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Crip Time: Against Capitalism’s Temporal Bullying. It is a field guide of associated approaches, within the artists, curators, and cultural organizers involved draw a map towards possible emancipatory futures centered on healing justice, disability justice, racial justice, and climate justice.

Taraneh makes delicious Kuku Sabzi, has a mean left hook, and loves picking mulberries and nettle on her regular long walks.