Taji Ra'oof Nahl is TR7

Taji Ra’oof Nahl is an audio, visual artist, composer & curator whose work examines history and culture through engagement with archives, documents, stories, sounds & sites. Nahl’s Ra’oof Atelier projects components are cinematic, dialogic and take form as expanded field activations. Nahl is an auto didactic polymath whose oeuvre is as he states "avant-garde artistic journalism". His work was shown in 2012 as part of Tanjazz Festival at the Italian Palace in Tanjier Morocco, and in 2013 as part of the "I Love Accra Film Festival" in Accra Ghana. Nahl has developed projects with the support of University of Pennsylvania’s Kislak Center for Rare Manuscripts & Books, Temple University’s Charles L. Blockson Afro American Archives, and John Coltrane & Paul Robeson House - Philadelphia. He presented video works at Franklin Institute Fel’s Planetarium as part of a Sun Ra project conducted by Philadelphia Jazz Project in 2014. Nahl performed as Blanche Bruce at the Harlem Gate House 2014 &  Lone Wolf Recital Corps at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts 2015,  both in honor of the late Terry Adkins. In April 2017, as Artist in Residence at Icebox Project Space he conducted an iteration of his ongoing project, Oversight Committee with George Lewis,  and curated  Renaissance Report Live w host Noah Smalls featuring Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Theodore A. Harris and others. In 2018, Nahl’s public art commission "18+8 “ with the Fairmount Park Conservancy, consisted of a was 40 ft. ephemeral sculpture homage to the first African American Medal of Honor recipients at the Smith War Memorial, Philadelphia. In 2020 Nahl was an Artist in Residence at Marginal Utility furthering his immersive video installation “Micro Film Festival w/ live Soundtrack Recording Session”. During 2021 as part of Philadelphia Sculptors’s Voices & Visionaries exhibition Nahl mounted an interactive installation & stage production, Gaslight: The New Kabuki Theatre.
Consisting of videos, sculptures & audio performance at Cherry Street Pier.
Furthermore he was founder & director of acclaimed Taji Modern Gallery in Philadelphia circa 1998 - 2009. Also he a member of Philadelphia Dumptser Divers, Philadelphia Sculptors.

 

As TR7 social engagement base expands, so does his collaboration list; Amber Arts Collective, Kali Yuga Zoo Brigade, Sherman Fleming, Charles Lloyd, June Lopez, Eva Peston, Meg Foley, Jamele Ransom, Bariq Cobbs, Sebastienne Mundheim, Embarker, Chaka Benson, Hprizm, Raphael Xavier, John Schlesinger, Shawn Theodore & others.

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Taji also spearheads 2Spiral Art Collective & The Other Sounds Of Philadelphia, in which TR7 collaborates with artist of vast disciplines to develop art & audio works that explores the transformative elements of compassion, freedom, justice and productive activism.