93 Fragments is organized by DC-based artist Mojdeh Rezaeipour (they/she) and hosted by GW’s Corcoran School of the Arts & Design in Gallery 1 at the Flagg Building from November 14, 2024–February 15, 2025. The project includes a group exhibition and a series of programs that bring together the creative practices and methodologies of sixteen artists, writers, and thinkers from all over the world who are in direct conversation with materials of cultural heritage. Engaging themes of restitution, reclamation, transmutation, and talismanic connection, 93 Fragments proposes a radical reimagining of stewardship that aims to transform a museum-like showcase of preserved objects and artworks into a space of revolutionary and liberatory potential.

93 Fragments is also a public iteration of research informing The Collaborative Fragment Library (CFL), a counter-institutional framework for working with artifacts, currently co-stewarded by Rezaeipour and Fargo Nissim Tbakhi. The CFL uses a library model (rather than a museum) to destabilize the processes of colonial extraction and fetishization of materials of cultural heritage, seeking to build alternative models of engagement that think differently about the past and enable these artifacts to continue living.

When reflecting on the process of organizing 93 Fragments, Rezaeipour says, “I started out by making a list of friends and heroes whose methodologies I wanted to learn from. Over the past several months, the vision and shape of the project has continued to evolve via a series of ongoing collaborative conversations. I am looking forward to seeing how everything continues to transform once we open to the public.”

Visitors to the exhibition will be invited to take off their shoes, sit together, drink tea, and engage with an evolving array of visual artwork, poetry, video, and fragments (material, linguistic, and otherwise) by participants in the project. This will include installations and visual artworks by The Collaborative Fragment Library, Saj Issa, Tsedaye Makonnen, Jackie Milad, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, and Dima Srouji, and a commissioned poem by Solmaz Sharif which will emerge over the course of the project.

Free public programs include a conversation between sociologist Dr. Cresa Pugh and author Helon Habila (February 1, 2025), and a screening of Sophia Al-Maria’s film The Future Was Desert followed by a meditation led by artist Naoco Wowsugi (February 15, 2025). Students at GW’s Corcoran School of the Arts & Design will also participate in the project with Rezaeipour through courses taught by Clement Akpang, whose research interests include decolonization of museology and new expressions of resistance in contemporary African art.

Additional contributors include Ibrahim Ahmed, Jeiran Jahani, Nyugen E. Smith, and Jessica Valoris who are all conversation partners in the development of this project.