Rashin Fahandej is an Iranian-American immersive filmmaker, futurist, and cultural activist. Her artistic initiatives are multiyear experimental laboratories for collective radical reimaginations of social systems, employing counter-narratives of care and community co-creation to envision transformative futures.
Fahandej's methodology, rooted in her “Art as Ecosystem” concept, intertwines philosophical inquiry with innovative artistic practices that center marginalized voices to catalyze systemic change. By leveraging emerging technologies such as AI, AR, VR, and immersive media and fostering cross-sector collaborations with communities, institutions, and organizations, her approach positions artistic processes as powerful tools for social transformation. Through this lens, art becomes not only a medium for storytelling but, more importantly, the creative process itself serves as a powerful means to challenge oppressive systems, inspire collective action, and spark future imagination. Fahandej defines her projects as a “Poetic Cyber Movement for Social Justice,” where art mobilizes a plethora of voices by creating connections between public places and virtual spaces.
Fahandej is the recipient of prestigious awards and residencies, including the Prix Ars Electronica Festival Award of Distinction in Digital Musics & Sound Art, the Institute of Contemporary Arts Boston’ James and Audrey Foster Prize (2019), and the Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship (2019). Her residencies and fellowships include the MacDowell Artist Residency (2025), Mass MoCA (2023), ThoughtWorks Arts and Scatter VR (2019), Framingham Cultural Council (2019), and the Boston Center for the Arts Public Art Residency (2018).
Fahandej is the founder of “A Father’s Lullaby “ a decade-long, community-engaged, cross-constituency initiative that underscores the critical role of men in raising children while addressing the systemic racial disparities embedded in the criminal justice system. The project examines the far-reaching consequences of fathers' absence due to long-term incarceration, shedding light on its profound impact on children, women, and economically disadvantaged communities. Through immersive and participatory storytelling methodologies, innovative technologies, public art interventions, and community workshops, A Father’s Lullaby fosters dialogue and collective reflection on justice, equity, and systemic change. Incubated through the Boston Mayor’s Office Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program (2015 and 2017) and a multi-year research fellowship with the MIT Open Documentary Lab, this initiative has become a model for trauma-informed, socially engaged practices. It bridges art, technology, and activism to create transformative spaces for community-building and healing, centering the voices of those directly impacted by incarceration. By centering on the resilience of families and the often-erased narratives of fatherhood, the project challenges dominant narratives about criminality and reimagines possibilities for restorative justice and intergenerational healing.
Fahandej serves as a consultant in the field of emergent media technology, specializing in equity-based technology integration for system-level impact in institutional and community settings. She has led and implemented instructional design initiatives that incorporate cutting-edge technology and community co-creation pedagogy across institutions and globally. This includes establishing the Future Inclusion Lab in Austria, in partnership with ZERO1, Ars Electronica, and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the launch of a new Immersive Media and Co-Creation Lab at Universidad de Antioquia Medellín, Colombia, in partnership with MIT, and launch of a new initiative at MIT Reality Hack in partnership with Virtual World Society, bringing together thought leaders in the XR field to focus on system-level impact and institutional change.
In her role as Senior Co-Creation Research-Practitioner at MIT Open Doc Lab and Co-creation Studio, Fahandej mentors international fellows and various initiatives, including the Indigenous Immersive Incubator and the Climate Future Worlding project at MIT's Co-creation Studio. She actively contributes to initiatives focusing on Access and Disability Innovation and the augmentation and future of public spaces. Fahandej serves as a board member at Hands House Studio and served at the Boston Center for the Arts and the New Media Caucus, where she advanced initiatives dedicated to racial equity, strategic planning, and internationalization efforts.
As an Assistant Professor of Immersive and Interactive Media, she launched a social impact XR Co-Creation initiative in 2020 through Visual Media Arts courses at Emerson College. Rooted in her Art as Ecosystem model, the initiative trains students and community members in emerging technologies and co-creation methodologies to address social justice challenges. In collaboration with formerly incarcerated fathers, probation officers, and their children, participants develop personal documentary projects using AR, VR, 360° film, and Volumetric technologies to confront mass incarceration. Partnering with the Federal Probation Office’s Nurturing Fathers program, the initiative advances innovative, collaborative storytelling that prioritizes access, equity, and shared authorship, redefining who tells stories and how they are told.
Boston Globe review, Foster Prize Biennial, and A Father’s Lullaby installation at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Boston
Award of Distinction in Digital Musics & Sound Art, Prix Ars Electronica Festival 2021
Goethe-Institut, interview with Rashin Fahandej about A Father’s Lullaby, its philosophy, and co-creation methodology, Kultur Symposium 2021
“What motivates my artistic practice is my life investment in social justice. I interrogate oppressive systems to give voice to marginalized narratives and personal stories, and to propagate poetic expressions of local and global perspectives. My approach to artmaking is deeply informed by my passion for social justice and my personal experience as a woman and a member of persecuted Baha’i minority in Iran, as an immigrant in Boston, and as an educator. I consider my art a voice for the margins communicated through the poetry of visuals.”
”My practice builds upon what I call “Art as Ecosystem,” a network of collaborations with multiplicity of narratives that investigate social systems and occupy public sites as a critical discourse.”
”My process of artmaking provides an avenue for studying social, cultural, and political issues and engagements. Installations provide the third space to bring a variety of mediums together with audiences in order to create a place for contemplation; a place for re/defining our definitions of self and others. The artwork itself is complete only within the dialogue and conversations created as a result of audience interaction and participation.”
”I am interested in the fluctuating space of cross-cultural encounter; as a result, I create collaborative projects, physically bringing artists from different backgrounds together to co-create works that reflect our shared concerns as they transform and fuse together in the creative process. ”
“My practice builds upon what I call “Art as Ecosystem,” a network of collaborations with a multiplicity of narratives that investigate social systems and occupy public sites and online platforms as a critical discourse. In this field, emerging technologies and co-creative processes are tools and frameworks to form alternative communities and promote cross-sector collaborations using the transformative power of personal stories. Creative processes become opportunities for collective actions and shift the dominant narratives around urgent social challenges. In this act of storytelling, the personal political realities of race, gender, immigration, class, and climate justice are intersectional. From this place of interwoven holistic narrative, “Art as Ecosystem” arises.
“Art as Ecosystem” acknowledges that, in order to reimagine social paradigms and redesign systems, there is a fundamental need to redefine our processes so that they become the embodiment of the changes envisioned. I utilize immersive technologies and design co-creative processes based on philosophies of collective care, poetic justice, and the power of individuals’ direct action toward systemic change. Community Co-creation practice center on the lived experiences of community members as expertise and shift the traditional power dynamics within traditional media production. Community co-creation “offers alternatives to a single-author vision” by reframing “the ethics of who creates, how, and why,” and “interprets the world, and seeks to change it, through a lens of equity and justice” (Cizek, Katerina; Uricchio, William, et al. Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating Media within Communities, across Disciplines and with Algorithms. 2019. https://wip.mitpress.mit.edu/collectivewisdom.) Emerging technologies offer new languages with which to form meaningful connections and inclusive relations for critical inquiries and future speculations that expand our terrains of storytelling. Immersive experiences—both physical and virtual—act as a third space to bring a variety of mediums together. They provide audiences/witnesses with a place for contemplation; a place for re/defining our definitions of self and others. The artwork is complete only with the conversations and actions created as a result of audience interaction and participation.”