"She has an infectious energy, eliciting all sorts of emotions from those participating in the performance." gal-dem
Ⓒ Jemima Yong
I make art. I perform (acting, dancing, singing, speaking). I write. I collaborate. My work tends to involve live performance, voice, movement and text. You can call me Tara or Dr. Fatehi, your choice. Don't get confused, my full surname is Fatehi Irani but I'm sticking to the main bit: Fatehi. Below is a more sophisticated bio illustrating some of my easily measurable achievements in third person. If CVs are your thing, click here.
Tara Fatehi (b. Tehran, 1987) is an artist, writer and performer. She has been working across performance, theatre, video, music, spoken word, dance and writing since 2006. Her work is at the intersection of the sociopolitical and the poetic and is primarily concerned with the ephemeral interactions between memories, words, bodies and sites. She has performed at the Royal Academy of Arts, United Nations Office at Geneva, V&A, Stadtgarten Köln, SPILL Festival, Nuffield Theatre, Battersea Arts Centre, Toynbee Studios, Chelsea Theatre, HighFest and Molavi Theatre amongst other international sites. She enjoys unfinishedness, mistranslation, multivocality (as in having multiple voices), ambiguity and playfulness.
In addition to making her own work, Tara works as a performer and voice artist. She has recently worked as an actress with Teatro O Bando (Portugal) and as a performer with Hooman Sharifi's Impure company (Norway). Other recent performances are in pieces by Agnieszka Blonska, Station House Opera, Simone Mousset and Renelde Pierlot.
Tara regularly collaborates with other artists, musicians, choreographers and writers. She often works with composer and musician Pouya Ehsaei with whom she creates the unusual futuristic music and poetry events From the Lips to the Moon. She is part of DARC (Documentation Action Research Collective) alongside Ernst Fischer, Holly Revell, Manuel Vason and Jemima Yong. She has created an 8 hour duet performance, Always Already, with Karen Christopher. Among her other collaborators are: Setareh Fatehi, 30 Bird, Richard Dedomenici, Sarah Feli and Makan Ashgvari.
Tara's writing has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and publications. Her book Mishandled Archive is published by LADA (2020). She completed a PhD at University of Roehampton, London (2020) through which she proposed mishandling as a way to engage with archives through multivocality, pyromania, mythology and web‑archaeography.
Alongside her creative practice, Tara teaches performance and theatre to different age groups and has been visiting lecturer at various UK institutions (incl. Goldsmiths, Central School of Speech and Drama, Roehampton, Kings College) and runs workshops internationally. She has mentored several artists at different stages of their career. In 2021, she was the first ever resident artist at the United Nations Archives at Geneva.
Current projects available for booking:
From the Lips to the Moon: an unusual music and poetry show with Pouya Ehsaei
Mishandled Archive: performance and book
Always Already: performance and installation (with Karen Christopher)
a place to sit: performance for camera
Borderline Dialogue: video performance