Eshan Rafi

Eshan Rafi is a Toronto/Tkaronto based artist working across time-based, lens-based and choreographic practices. Their art works deal with the intersection of political events and personal archives, often staging the impossibility of representation. Moving between texts, images, and the body, their performance practice explores translation and transposition across forms.
Born in Lahore, they have since lived in Toronto, Montréal, Beirut, Berlin, and Chicago. The cultural landscapes of these various places have come to shape their artistic practice today.

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MY FATHER’S IMAGINATION, OR THE EMPIRE IS DROWNING IN BLOOD

my father’s imagination, or the empire is drowning in blood, is an ongoing research project that takes shape as a performance, an exhibition, a workshop, and an artist book. A text spoken by the artist’s father, in reference to his political activism as a young communist in 1970s Lahore, is the starting point for the question: how to live with and through history?

©Anna Johnson

©Eshan Rafi

©Anna Johnson

©Eshan Rafi

CREDITS

Team

Creation
Eshan Rafi

Sound Design
Erin Thomas

Performance
Ashwaty Chennat

Creations

The Empire Is Drowning in Blood: Socialist Poster Art From Pakistan, Hopscotch at AGIT, Berlin, 2025
my father’s imagination, Roman Susan, Chicago, 2025