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My recent body of work borrows from Iranian history, art and architecture, decorative arts, and crafts as an allegory for the displacement experienced by contemporary Iranians, both physically and mentally. My focus has been on materials and how they relate to each other. I recreate decorative elements, especially Persian vases, and ancient Persian and Islamic structures—thrones, walls, stairs, windows, and gates—through the use of homemade natural dyes, fabric dyes, cement tape, acrylic, spray paint, fabric collages, and printmaking. The geometric structures are surrounded by spiral organic forms and tablets reminiscent of ancient Persian and Arabic calligraphy. The contradictions of material and form arise from the complex relationship between my identity and culture.

The visual tension and the displacement of ancient Iranian relics and designs express my immigration story, which paradoxically is a mixture of belonging and non-belonging. The works reflect the feeling of a society disillusioned with a 40-year-old revolution. Feelings that praise the rich cultural and artistic past while simultaneously fear of the deep gap between that beautiful past and the ugly present. Mirroring today’s Iranian protesters, hopeful about a vague future. Making engaging images from these materials and tools gives them a new life.

The vase imagery in my paintings is referenced from the Persian poet, astronomer, and mathematician Omar Khayyam’s writing. The vases, each different from the others and a symbol of human diversity, reference the stolen Persian ancient objects in museums worldwide. Vases and other museum objects such as scissors, daggers, decanters, and lanterns once had a living and functional identity but today have only a decorative and historical identity; therefore, the silhouettes of broken and dusty objects are a metaphor for the displaced body. As a result, the vases and other objects in my works are a symbol of human beings with an identity belonging to the past.