The Dwelling Places is a solo exhibition of work by Elnaz Javani, who was selected through TSA Chicago’s first open call. Here, Javani presents a new body of work which includes small and large-scale, hand-dyed and printed textiles that incorporate surface manipulation, appliqué, and hand-stitching. Exploring how the body is affected and shaped by its negotiations with the objects and spaces around them, Javani creates surfaces in which identities are constantly being reconsidered and set into new relations with their surroundings, addressing the slippage that is always present.

In Queer Phenomenology, Sara Ahmed writes about the notion of disorientation as not only a bodily feeling but also a political concept. The way our bodies move about in the world, the way certain objects and places are accessible to us, indicate that there are some sites in which we feel habituated—our bodies are “in place”—and other sites in which we don’t. This disorientation takes the form of moments of perceived loss, of “failed orientation,” that give rise to new directions for creating a sense of belonging.

Through the acts of layering, cutting, printing, dying and sewing, Javani creates moments of disorientation and reorientation that question history, gender, culture and celebrate confusion, doubt, and entanglement as generative forces. Her engagement with tactile materials models how we can use storytelling and image-making as transformative strategies for survival and resistance by challenging dominant narratives that simplify and flatten the experience. It is through moments of disorientation, she proposes, that we might learn what it means to be oriented in the first place.