Consequential to the traumatic societal and political situation in my motherland, Iran, the number of Iranian diasporas has increased all over the world, and the Persian cultural, social, and political borders have been expanded much wider than their geographical ones. While this immigrant populace living in the receiver societies is still affected psychologically, and physically by the traumas coming from their land of origin.

For this thesis, I as an Iranian female artist, living in exile, and as a cancer survivor, interrogating my body and my soul, about what I have experienced in my social-political time and place. The research applied a combination of studio-based exploration through video performance and sculptural installation, supported by library-based investigation which lies in the intersection of psychoanalysis, trauma’s physical and psychological impacts, displacement, politics, and art. I use the idea of Jungian archetypes alongside Gabor Maté's work in When the Body Says No to argue that the social-political traumas from the homeland will never be erased from immigrants' bodies, minds, and souls. I examine how the chronic pain that runs through my body is interwoven with the trauma of people living in Iran through the sense of empathy, and how this situation could be explored through the lens of such Jungian archetypes as the Caregiver.

My work visually explores reconstructing Iranian cultural elements, like the Persian rug, through/with my body. The Routes of Blood is a creation of Persian rug sand installation, which embodies my labor, physical presence, soul, and mind in the space, simultaneously. In The Woven Bodies Series, the image of my body through repetition forms the textile patterns of the Persian Rug. The act of performing with the rug and its documentation symbolically represents my memories of my motherland and the trauma that resonates through the afflictions of the chronic pain I have experienced.

The thesis is a visualization of the trauma experienced in my Iranian body in the disassociated space of a diasporic context within Canada.