2021-22 Sherman Fairchild Fellow Shiloah Coley speaks with Mojdeh Rezaeipour about her video work in The Phillips Collection’s 100th anniversary Juried Invitational Inside Outside, Upside Down.

Still from watching time watching god, Courtesy of the artist

Mojdeh Rezaeipour’s video felt momentarily complete for the first time as she viewed it at the opening of Inside Outside, Upside Down at the Phillips with former neighbors, who are now dear friends.

“We were all able to witness it together,” said Mojdeh.

Mojdeh’s meditative video, watching time watching god, documents the way time passes. She tracks light moving across the wall and the moon in the sky. Using projection mapping, she captures what’s happening outside the window and projects it onto a different surface of the house, making an imprint. She describes it as having a conversation with the house.

Behind the scenes of capturing the footage of watching time watching god, Courtesy of the artist

“For me, it felt like I’m telling the wall something—about what another part of the house experienced.” These aren’t the conversations she imagined having at the beginning of 2020.

As a resident artist at The Nicholson Project, Mojdeh proposed an on-site activation, allowing her to get to know her new neighbors in Southeast DC. Conscious of her positionality as a non-Black person of color applying to a residency in a quickly gentrifying DC, she sought to learn from community members in the predominantly Black area. “I wanted to somehow make my work a container for what was already there instead of just bringing my work there.”

Just as the city went into lockdown in March 2020, Mojdeh began The Nicholson Project’s Artist Residency Program. The residency welcomes artists from all creative disciplines who are especially interested in the role that art and design can play in strengthening the community to reside there for three months. As Mojdeh moved in, the world around her was closing down. A common occurrence for us all over the past 18 months, she found herself struggling to meet people. From scheduling Zoom teas to trying to make eye contact with folks on the street, she did all she could to connect.

Then, she found an unlikely answer through a different kind of connection right in front of her.

watching time watching god, 2020, Video, Courtesy of the artist, on view in Inside Outside, Upside Down

“It’s like—oh, okay, while I’m trying to have conversations with my neighbors, I’m also having a conversation with the house,” said Mojdeh. “The house is the most accessible entity with whom to have a conversation.”

As she bore witness to time passing in and around the house, the constant sounds served as a soundtrack of her time there and also the audio for the video. The typical sounds of a DC neighborhood—birds chirping, dogs barking, and helicopters overhead—serve as a steady hum throughout the piece. But it’s the ambulance sirens that might catch a listener by surprise. The home for the residency sits next to a highway that leads to a hospital. “The ambulance sirens were a reminder of the massive collective grief that we’re needing to process,” Mojdeh said.

After the police murder of George Floyd and the following uprisings and protests, she felt pretty clearly that this was not the time for her to have an exhibition. She held onto the work and shared the footage with a handful of neighbors who had become her good friends.

Rezaeipour with friends and fellow artist Nekisha Durrett at the opening of Inside Outside, Upside Down, Courtesy of the artist (Left to right: Nekisha Durrett , John, Seth, Mojdeh Rezaeipour, Gayle, and Kendall)

These same friends were able to join her at the opening of Inside Outside, Upside Down, the first public showing of the piece. “The work that we make is just as much about what is not visible as what is visible. And what is not visible but lives at the heart of the work I made in this exhibition are these relationships.”

Mojdeh continues to build relationships as she tackles a new research-based project centered on ancient pottery fragments originating in over 30 different sites across the Middle East. The project builds toward a collective project informed by conversations with artists and humans with lineages across all of the sites.

May we keep in mind the presence of those who might be physically absent.

2021-22 Sherman Fairchild Fellow Shiloah Coley speaks with Dominick Cocozza, the youngest artist in the Phillips 100th anniversary Juried Invitational Inside Outside, Upside Down.

Dominick Cocozza alongside his piece, COVID-19 Self Portrait, at the Inside Outside, Upside Down opening, Courtesy of the artist

At 19 years-old, Dominick Cocozza has a very impressive curriculum vitae. He’s exhibited work in the U.S. Capitol, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and most recently in Inside Outside, Upside Down with the piece COVID-19 Self Portrait, a larger than life charcoal drawing with Dominick wearing a mask as he participates in fall festivities at a pumpkin patch.

“I think self-portraits represent a stamp in time and it’s still a very pivotal moment in our history,” said Dominick.

This isn’t the first time Dominick’s work has been very timely. The artist is very adept at responding to the world around him.

He gained early recognition and a national platform in 2019 when his piece Immigration, featuring two children holding a sign that reads “Bring Our Mom Back,” was selected as one of the winners of the Congressional Art Competition. The nationwide visual art competition is sponsored by the Congressional Institute to recognize and encourage artistic talent in the nation and each congressional district.

Dominick Cocozza, Immigration, 2019, Acrylic and ink on paper, Courtesy of the artist

Dominick was not new to art competitions. He competed in them from the time his parents began to recognize his talents in elementary school. However, this was the first time his work was up for critique in front of a national audience, and at a moment with heightened media attention on the U.S.-Mexico border crisis as political debates raged on.

“This was the first time I got critiques and maybe not so nice messages from other people. But I think through all of that, I’m so grateful for that experience because it got me more equipped,” said Cocozza. “If this is something I want to enter in the real world, and I want to explore these concepts, then that’s just how our community is at this point of time and that’s just what art is—art is great when it sparks conversation.”

While Dominick is a veteran of competitions consisting of folks in his age cohort, Inside Outside, Upside Down was his first time having his work selected for a juried exhibition where he would be in conversation with more established artists. It wasn’t until reading the press release for the exhibition that he realized he was the 19-year-old in the show mentioned as the youngest artist.

“I felt really humbled to be a part of a community of really amazing artists in the DC metropolitan area that I look up to,” Cocozza said.

The emerging artist is still paving his own way, exploring different concepts as he starts his second year at the Rhode Island School of Design this fall. More personal work around his identities as a Guatemalan-American adoptee are still in flux.

Dominick alongside his piece, Fractured Embrace, 2021, Charcoal on paper, Courtesy of the artist

Dominick said, “I think that part of my art making is being able to make sure that I’m promoting more inclusive themes throughout my work where I’m representing my community in a light that I feel isn’t being represented at all.”

As Dominick contemplates his own identities in his work, he encourages other young emerging artists to remain true to themselves in the midst of the highs and lows.

“Know your self worth and be able to harness that,” said Dominick.