ARTIST STATEMENT
My work explores human experiences and uses metaphorical approaches for depicting emotions that can be involved in various human interactions. I agree with Peeren that “there is a unique way in which the maker and the appreciator of a metaphor are drawn to each other.” (Peeren, 2014)
Storytelling and narratives play significant roles in my practice, yet my work mainly emphasizes the experience of each story for human beings, not the story itself. My art is quite personal and it helps me to make sense of different complicated experiences that I have had. How we as humans process pain, trauma and belongingness, is my main interest now. By indicating new perspectives through metaphors, I encourage the viewer to engage in and review their understanding of a situation with a new language.
Although ceramic is the main medium of my art practice now, it is not limited to that. Painting, performance, sound and print are some of the other mediums that I use. In my most recent project, I use ceramic containers as metaphors for homeland, diaspora and pain in order to start a dialogue about experiences such as letting go of and holding pain that forced exile can cause. Familiarity, touch and intimacy are important factors in my artworks and I am interested in asking and creating questions, not necessarily answering them directly.
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References:
Peeren, E. (2014). The Spectral Metaphor. London Palgrave Macmillan Uk.
CRITICAL REFLECTION
My work, a therapeutic tool for myself, has helped me get through many difficult situations until today. I have found out that there are parts of ourselves as humans that we find quite hard to deal with. Using metaphors helps us to get a reasonable distance from that hardship and make sense of it in a new language that does not necessarily involve words.
One of the main ideas behind my current research is the concept of pain and how individual humans, or even generations deal with it. My homeland, Iran, has always been a source of pain and joy for me. Considering the ongoing protests in Iran by people seeking freedom and their most basic rights after Mahsa Amini’s death, and based on the idea that I might never feel safe to go back to Iran, I explore concepts like homeland, diaspora and forced exile.
“I'm still understanding. I'm still coming out, settling in the realisations that I was never not in them. I had never left them, though I longed to stay. I did not know in my mind what my body sensed. I realized recently that to claim one's body fully is to be intimately acquainted with pain. And once that knowledge becomes deeply embedded, another one blossoms. In the depth of pain lives the flower of pleasure. In the loss of self, the yielding to gravity, the latent ever-present agent of death, and of belonging.” (Jagoe, 2020)
Reference:
Jagoe, R. (2020). On care. Ma Bibliothèque.
