This MFA thesis is a practice-led attempt to retell lived experiences from post-Revolution Iran through embodied art. I observe, reflect, and give form using my own body and labor. I do not collect, interview, or quote personal stories from others. The material comes from my own memories of growing up in Iran, from publicly documented events since 1979, and from the quiet, shared atmosphere of Iranian life that I continue to feel1 and witness in diaspora.
The exhibition consists of interrelated works: paintings, sculptures, performances, installations, audio layers, and mixed-media objects. I take art practices and gestures that Iranians have long carried out indoors as ways of telling stories, seeking comfort, or simply making something beautiful, and I re-do them here with materials I can find in Canada. These indoor gestures include carpet weaving, embroidering, poetry, lullabies, calligraphy and etc. I try to bring those same rhythms, repetitions, touches, and quiet intentions into the gallery.
With the gestures, the colors, the patterns, the sounds, the language or symbols recognizable to many Iranian viewers, I aim to make sure they feel familiar and know that the work is speaking about them while the human, slow, repetitive, caring, and enduring quality invites my non-Iranian viewers to feel something too, even when they do not know the specific historical references or news titles. I aim for the emotion to arrive before the explanation, so they can relate to the stories beyond the headlines and numbers. My body is the only performer and maker in every piece: wrapped and taped into life-size forms, bound with threads resembling a carpet, enclosed inside clear shipping boxes covered in my own handwritten poetry, enduring timed physical restriction before cutting myself free.
The central question running through the work is how to use the privilege of being able to speak freely and having access to the universal language of art to amplify rather than replace voices. I want to be present as a witness and a conduit, never as the voice that speaks for my people, but as someone who tries to hold space so their realities can be felt more clearly. The practice is deliberately ongoing: it began before this thesis, continues through it, and will keep going after.
I never ask anyone to participate. Yet during public presentations and exhibitions, some people chose to add something unprompted. Whenever these happened, I asked for and received explicit consent before including anything. For safety and ethical reasons, I deliberately altered and layered the voices so no individual could be recognized by sound.
This written text supports the first early exhibitions and the final exhibition.
It tries to think through what it means to observe and retell through one’s own body, what happens when indoor gestures are moved into a public gallery, how unsolicited contributions can arrive and be handled with care, how audiences respond, and what this way of working has taught me about being a storyteller who wants to stay honest and protective at the same time.