Tribeca Exhibiting Fahandej’s Immersive Look at Fathers’ Love

Rashin Fahandej’s multimedia installation A Father’s Lullaby, a look at how structural racism within the U.S. criminal justice system and mass incarceration impacts families, is an official selection of Tribeca Immersive, screening through the end of June.

The installation is part of Tribeca Immersive’s In Search of Us exhibition, a collection of projects that “ask questions, uncover hidden truths, and create shared space through storytelling,” according to Tribeca Film Festival’s description. It runs weekends through Sunday, June 29, at WSA, 161 Water Street, New York, NY.

Read: VMA Professor’s ‘Poetic Cyber Movement’ Tackles Mass Incarceration at the ICA

A Father’s Lullaby is a poetic piece in which formerly incarcerated fathers offer memories of songs — either those sung to them by their own fathers or those they sang to their children. The installation uses memory, music, and storytelling to examine the absence created by incarceration, and how it affects families.

Developed over a decade in collaboration with justice-impacted communities, A Father’s Lullaby gathers stories, songs, and testimonies of formerly incarcerated fathers, youth, corrections officers, loved ones, and the wider community. The piece invites audiences to reflect on the systems in which we live and to imagine new conceptions of justice based on care, connection, and shared responsibility, according to a description of the installation.

“For me, it’s really not about the fathers as much as it is about their childhood and their children’s childhood and how that love could have made a difference,” Fahandej, Assistant Professor of Visual and Media Arts, told Emerson Today in 2019, when A Father’s Lullaby was on exhibit at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. 

Read: VMA Professor’s ‘Poetic Cyber Movement’ Tackles Mass Incarceration at the ICA

An accompanying augmented reality piece, Lullabies Through Time, “is an interactive experience “designed to bridge past, present, and future — tracing the enduring legacies of racialized systems of control and confinement, in order to reclaim public spaces as sites of healing, reconnection, and future-building,” according to Tribeca.

“No matter what point of view you have in terms of policy, [the lullaby] automatically brings you to a space of love and intimacy,” Fahandej said during the ICA exhibit.