Over the past decade my art has been focusing on human nature and nature in general. To address these broad topics, especially as they manifest in contemporary life, I have created different series in both painting and photography. Before, I was primarily looking at modern events and tragedies such as the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, and Islamic Revolution. Now I have begun to consider such events from a more autobiographical point of view, integrating personal memories of my childhood in Teheran, my father’s imprisonment (under both Shah and Ayatollah), my early adolescence as a child bride, and my life as an immigrant. In this way, I have continued commenting on these historical events, but also am studying the stories of other immigrants and refugees and reading the poets who have written about these events from these specific regions.
When I was younger I wrote poetry in my native Farsi, and my classical training in Iran involved the development of symbolic layers and mystical literary applications. I have now mirrored this layering construct by inventing visuals that I believe reflect subconscious conversations without the specificity of any single narrative. They are meant to connect to a wide number of viewers and to multiple symbolic constructs not specifically tied to just one kind of audience or one event. Following this new interest, the recent sequence began with “Wonderland” and has proceeded to “After Me,” “Rabbit Holes,” and my current series, “Cross - Overs.”
“Wonderland” was a 2-year project, worked on alongside other paintings and photographs as I transitioned from researching recent historical phenomena to tracing a more intimate examination of dangers and survivals and the poetry of the heart. The “Cross – Overs” project, consisting of hundreds of pieces, is a kind of puzzle, a world map of experiences, of the intersection of stories by various immigrants and refugees, including my own. “Cross – Overs” looks at those who crossed over and those who remained in exile or became victims of their journeys and/or conquered them. It examines re-contextualization and transformation of the content of these cross-overs. The “conversational” grid is not just a sentimental reaction to a shared history of humanity, but rather a disciplined way, manifested structurally, of learning about the integration of the world, an integration and world of which I am a part. Ultimately, in its quest for coherency and beauty, “Cross – Overs” is an expression of hope, on the individual level and on that of our species, that we use these cross-overs as a way of bridging our differences.
December 2017