Taji Ra'oof Nahl Named 2024 Guggenheim Fellow
BY PASC | April 18, 2024
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Taji Ra’oof Nahl as painter Norman Lewis during a staged production at the closing of Lewis’s exhibition ‘Procession’ (13 Nov. 2015–3 April 2016) at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
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#pascarts
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PASC joins the arts community in congratulating conceptual artist Taji Ra’oof Nahl, aka TR7, who has been named a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow. Nahl, who performed his “Adam Vocabulary Club” at PASC’s 2019 Symposium, is among 28 visual artists to receive the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in fine arts. In its 99th year, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation’s fellows were selected by peer review from a pool of nearly 3,000 applicants. PASC celebrates Nahl for this well-deserved recognition; we’ll publish an interview with the artist soon.
“I received the news of being awarded the Fellowship on the sacred day of Eid al-Fitr,” says Nahl. (The Muslim Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan, was celebrated this year on April 11.) “I’m grateful to Allah, highly glorified and praised is He, and the faithful as we stand side by side,” Nahl says. “I want to thank my wife Darnita and my mother Carolyn Thorpe. Everyone who trusts my vision has contributed, be it in front or behind the scenes. Thank you to the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as we work towards benefiting human existence.”
Nahl’s art places viewers in a realm of alternative realities. His fascination with the phenomena of humanity’s triumph over difficulty is ultimately connected to processing and absorbing a very personal, inward search for mankind’s place in the universe. Influenced by his Islamic faith, Nahl’s art prompts greater self-awareness through his multidisciplinary approach of staged production and lens-based media.
His multifaceted and ever-evolving project, “Calculating Banneker,” pursues the factual and speculative potentialities of the polymath Benjamin Banneker’s legacy. Banneker’s intellectual prowess across various systems of knowledge, questioning, proposing, and documenting in his almanac, is Nahl’s material for the projects. The works will serve as chronicles of what Nahl calls an “avant-garde artistic journalistic” approach, giving new agency to the great depth and breadth of Banneker’s contributions to humanity.
For more about Nahl and his work, visit www.araoof.com and Channel TR7 on YouTube.
For the full list of 2024 Guggenheim Fellows: www.gf.org.
“I received the news of being awarded the Fellowship on the sacred day of Eid al-Fitr,” says Nahl. (The Muslim Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan, was celebrated this year on April 11.) “I’m grateful to Allah, highly glorified and praised is He, and the faithful as we stand side by side,” Nahl says. “I want to thank my wife Darnita and my mother Carolyn Thorpe. Everyone who trusts my vision has contributed, be it in front or behind the scenes. Thank you to the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as we work towards benefiting human existence.”
Nahl’s art places viewers in a realm of alternative realities. His fascination with the phenomena of humanity’s triumph over difficulty is ultimately connected to processing and absorbing a very personal, inward search for mankind’s place in the universe. Influenced by his Islamic faith, Nahl’s art prompts greater self-awareness through his multidisciplinary approach of staged production and lens-based media.
His multifaceted and ever-evolving project, “Calculating Banneker,” pursues the factual and speculative potentialities of the polymath Benjamin Banneker’s legacy. Banneker’s intellectual prowess across various systems of knowledge, questioning, proposing, and documenting in his almanac, is Nahl’s material for the projects. The works will serve as chronicles of what Nahl calls an “avant-garde artistic journalistic” approach, giving new agency to the great depth and breadth of Banneker’s contributions to humanity.
For more about Nahl and his work, visit www.araoof.com and Channel TR7 on YouTube.
For the full list of 2024 Guggenheim Fellows: www.gf.org.
Taji Ra'oof Nahl (photo by Ibrahim Morris)