Artist's Statement

My work explores how identity is shaped through memory, social conditioning, and lived experience. Drawing from childhood memories, recurring nightmares, and trauma from growing up in Iran, I use making as a way to examine how social norms, religious expectations, and political structures have influenced my sense of self over time. I work primarily with fiber-based processes such as embroidery, weaving, sewing, and basketry, because these techniques are deeply connected to women’s everyday lives and cultural histories in Iran. Fiber functions for me as both material and metaphor: it carries labor, repetition, and inherited knowledge. By working with these traditionally undervalued practices, I investigate how femininity, obedience, care, and resistance are learned and internalized.

I often combine traditional hand stitches with unconventional materials such as hair, coarse threads, and tangled yarn. These material contrasts create tension between delicacy and unease, beauty and disruption. This friction reflects the contradictions that shape my identity—desire alongside fear, intimacy alongside control.

Through layering, repetition, and slow, labor-intensive processes, my work questions imposed roles and the boundaries between private and public life. While rooted in personal experience, the work speaks to a broader collective reality shared by many Iranian women navigating similar cultural and political constraints. I aim to create spaces where fragmented memories, inherited expectations, and evolving identities can be felt and held.