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Description
Remembrance is a body of work, inspired by tales, stories, narratives, and my own memories of friends, family, and life back in Iran. Many symbols that I consistently use in my pieces, represent how being far from my friends and family brought nostalgia to my life. In my work, I utilize materials that would be considered traditional. I use light and shadow, silk, text, especially Persian poetry, and human hair to fetch the sensation of memory through the eyes of an immigrant. The exhibition is designed to express my personal feelings from what I had experienced back home and my life as an immigrant living in San Diego, California. I have many memories reading poetry together with friends and family during different events. These past moments accompany me everywhere. In my work, I repeatedly use images of my own hair, which is curly, long and black; one may consider it typically Persian. I use this form as a connotation similar to calligraphic strokes of Persian writing. Hair has different meanings in different cultures, some cultures find it repelling, some hide it, etc. People express their feelings and emotions through hair. For example, in Iran women do not color their hair for a significant amount of time while mourning. In Native American culture long braided hair signifies unity with mother earth. None of these different customs need elaboration as the sensation is represented in the demeanor. It goes the same with poetry. I believe when a poem is recited, and when we hear the reader’s voice, it does not matter if we understand the language. The feeling behind the words will be revealed within the voice as they start to flow out of the mouth. Like hair, language carries ancestral DNA, we pass customs and traditions through.
