Nakisa Dehpanah

Entry Point: Saturday, February 28, 4 PM - 5:30 PM

Nakisa Dehpanah is an Iranian interdisciplinary artist and designer based in Seattle, working through textile sculpture, performance, and spatial practice. Her work explores how bodies carry memory and identity in relation to political, cultural, and architectural structures. Drawing from lived experience before and after immigration, as well as poetry and place, she creates participatory environments that invite reflection, care, and collective presence.

This Entry Point invites the public into the research phase of Suspended Selves. Six suspended prototype structures will be installed with incomplete skins, emphasizing process rather than finished work. Visitors are invited to create small fabric pieces using prompts and a range of materials focused on memory and presence, then attach them to the structures. Through this shared act, layered skins are built collectively. Participants are then guided to move slowly beneath and between the forms, eventually standing under one, experiencing the work through both making and embodied movement.

“At Base, I want to slow down and work with my hands and body together. I see this time as an opportunity to study how skin, structure, and movement hold memory, and how collective making can create moments of care and presence. I’m especially interested in how performance can emerge from the process, and how shared participation can shape the emotional life of a work.”