Maryam Khosrovani

53,000 Burned matches on multiple wood panels | 112x290 cm | Rogue Space Chelsea Gallery | New York | 2016

The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.

We are part of this small, fragile speck of life, and yet we don’t internalize or recognize what we are doing to it, even as we are only small parts of it, totally dependent on its well-being. I needed to feel it a concrete, realizable way.

As you light a match, you don’t just see the flame and feel the heat. The match produces sulfur, which in large quantities is harmful.
I burnt 53,000 matches in the process of making this artwork. The intensity of the labor and the intense smell of that much sulfur created an unpleasant and dangerous space to work in.
This space was created and imposed on myself by myself.

Traces...empreintes... Rien de plus étrange que la mémoire ! Les écueils ou les joies rencontrés, les envies ou les tristesses inexpliquées, les coups du destin coulent inexorablement comme l’eau, source de vie, calme, jaillissante, cascadant, murmurante, turbulente... La mémoire se forme au fil du temps, ponctue les étapes de votre vie marquée par l’empreinte des sens. Ce projet émerge de la compréhension des effets durables des sens et de leurs interconnexions d’un paradis perdu, mon jardin en Iran. Mémoire des lieux, mémoire collective iranienne pour ce goût des jardins persans et la recherche des sens, tout s’imbrique, briques elles-mêmes pour la construction des petits édifices de méditation, le bruissement de l’eau, le parfum des roses persanes, l’élévation des ifs vers le ciel, l’ombrage des saules pleureurs... Comme la madeleine de Proust, dans ma recherche permanente de la beauté qui est mienne, traces et empreintes de mon paradis perdu surgissent inexorablement comme des fils d’Ariane. Dans le quotidien de mon enfance je retrouve les dessins de pointe d’aiguilles à coudre pour dessiner ifs et saules pleureurs, les minuscules petits points de broderie pour retrouver les gradés de l’eau, le bleu azur des lessives pour teindre le papier pastel, le modelage des traces, techniques simples qui m’apaisent en retrouvant l’ambiance de mon jardin perdu et son emboîtement de briques. Traces... empreintes, ma mémoire rebondit vers des ailleurs qui me restent à découvrir. Je rêve d’une exposition où le murmure de l’eau mettrait en scène toutes ces briques de ma mémoire et de mon jardin disparu.

Morad Montazami, director of Zamân Books & Curating

Duo exhibition of MARYAM KHOSROVANI and KAVEH IRANI

Hamzianpour & KIa gallery - Los Angeles

Colored pencil on Arches paper - 2023

Maryam Khosrovani’s drawings (which at times can integrate weaving, folding or pinholes) are challenging for the eye. They often playfully unfurl in series and sequences, based on kinetic protocols and gravity laws. Her abstract hoses (connected to nothing in particular apart from themselves) and restless whirlpools, with their agility to cause us dizzy visions, appear at first glance, as a conceptual art tool synthesizing time, space and body movements in one (transmutable) pattern or
language. Behind their minimalistic claim for serendipity and profound stimuli for free movement and improvised directions, Khosrovani’s drawings elegantly attenuate the painstaking hours (days and nights) of work invested in shaping the infinitesimal veins and tubal ligations of the hose. Hence the positions taken by it and by Khosrovani’s work feel as much physical as conceptual.

During the preparatory process, photography plays a key role, as a capsule of the infinite contortions and squirming in which the hose consumes and animates itself; even though Khosrovani works simultaneously from mechanic reproductions and “real life” movements of the “plastic snakes”. The flawless photographic memory (and the overlap of multiple smaller preparatory drawings) encapsuled in the trials and tribulations of the hose, somehow survives in Khosrovani’s both hyperrealist and abstract technique. Her pencil becomes a seismographer which captures the unpredictable moves and circles of a seemingly non-human force (potentially
constrained by human influence or technicity but taken out of our sight).
The ambivalence of the hose, as an “anti-form” physical object and an unseizable designed pattern, goes with its psychoanalytic (and even sexual) interpretations; which could be well explained by an original break or rupture in which the hose becomes fundamentally divided: between a subject and an object of desire, between giving and receiving (going in and going out), between taking shape and losing
shape; feeling apart in the very act of coming together or finding his/her own or other half. But this psychoanalytic ambivalence actually doesn’t cover the entire subconscious territory of the migrating hose (framed/zoomed in and out).
It can be extended to the deeply personal childhood memory of the typical Tehran garden or courtyard, where the artist (and every Iranian child) used to play with that hose. The drawings also record the incarnated and “tactile” memory of that specific plastic, quite rigid, and difficult to unfurl in a straight line. They bring back an almost
physical battle for the child, confronted to a formless and unseizable plastic animal, escaping the hands of the child by its endless and fierce twists.
Eventually the entire extent of the fundamental visual ambivalence, felt in the formless and infinite shapes of one physical pattern and protocol, also comprises the contemporary political connotation. Nowadays such forms, beyond their bold erotic potential, their playfulness and optical stimulation, cannot but remind us the highly
political metaphor of the “cables” running our globalized digital economy. Beginning with the submarine cables routes, made for controlling the cloud memory, entailing a transborder data war and mutual surveillance between the powers of United States, China and others…
As a matter of fact, the infinity and serendipity of interconnectedness and channel making that fuel in Khosrovani’s drawings invades our stable subjectivity. Hence they spread out beyond the lines of personal traumas and intersubjective reconciliation or those of a self-centered and a decentered visual system. They are reversible like a glove that can be worn from the inside or the outside, providing two different
identities – always an overwhelming (beginningless, endless) dance.

Morad Montazami, director of Zamân Books & Curating

Duo exhibition of MARYAM KHOSROVANI and KAVEH IRANI

Hamzianpour & KIa gallery - Los Angeles

Pencil - sewing on Arches paper - 2023

Maryam Khosrovani’s drawings (which at times can integrate weaving, folding or pinholes) are challenging for the eye. They often playfully unfurl in series and sequences, based on kinetic protocols and gravity laws. Her abstract hoses (connected to nothing in particular apart from themselves) and restless whirlpools, with their agility to cause us dizzy visions, appear at first glance, as a conceptual art tool synthesizing time, space and body movements in one (transmutable) pattern or
language. Behind their minimalistic claim for serendipity and profound stimuli for free movement and improvised directions, Khosrovani’s drawings elegantly attenuate the painstaking hours (days and nights) of work invested in shaping the infinitesimal veins and tubal ligations of the hose. Hence the positions taken by it and by Khosrovani’s work feel as much physical as conceptual.

During the preparatory process, photography plays a key role, as a capsule of the infinite contortions and squirming in which the hose consumes and animates itself; even though Khosrovani works simultaneously from mechanic reproductions and “real life” movements of the “plastic snakes”. The flawless photographic memory (and the overlap of multiple smaller preparatory drawings) encapsuled in the trials and tribulations of the hose, somehow survives in Khosrovani’s both hyperrealist and abstract technique. Her pencil becomes a seismographer which captures the unpredictable moves and circles of a seemingly non-human force (potentially
constrained by human influence or technicity but taken out of our sight).
The ambivalence of the hose, as an “anti-form” physical object and an unseizable designed pattern, goes with its psychoanalytic (and even sexual) interpretations; which could be well explained by an original break or rupture in which the hose becomes fundamentally divided: between a subject and an object of desire, between giving and receiving (going in and going out), between taking shape and losing
shape; feeling apart in the very act of coming together or finding his/her own or other half. But this psychoanalytic ambivalence actually doesn’t cover the entire subconscious territory of the migrating hose (framed/zoomed in and out).
It can be extended to the deeply personal childhood memory of the typical Tehran garden or courtyard, where the artist (and every Iranian child) used to play with that hose. The drawings also record the incarnated and “tactile” memory of that specific plastic, quite rigid, and difficult to unfurl in a straight line. They bring back an almost
physical battle for the child, confronted to a formless and unseizable plastic animal, escaping the hands of the child by its endless and fierce twists.
Eventually the entire extent of the fundamental visual ambivalence, felt in the formless and infinite shapes of one physical pattern and protocol, also comprises the contemporary political connotation. Nowadays such forms, beyond their bold erotic potential, their playfulness and optical stimulation, cannot but remind us the highly
political metaphor of the “cables” running our globalized digital economy. Beginning with the submarine cables routes, made for controlling the cloud memory, entailing a transborder data war and mutual surveillance between the powers of United States, China and others…
As a matter of fact, the infinity and serendipity of interconnectedness and channel making that fuel in Khosrovani’s drawings invades our stable subjectivity. Hence they spread out beyond the lines of personal traumas and intersubjective reconciliation or those of a self-centered and a decentered visual system. They are reversible like a glove that can be worn from the inside or the outside, providing two different
identities – always an overwhelming (beginningless, endless) dance.

Morad Montazami, director of Zamân Books & Curating

Duo exhibition of MARYAM KHOSROVANI and KAVEH IRANI

Hamzianpour & KIa gallery - Los Angeles

Pencil on Arches paper, Sewing on paper - 2023

Maryam Khosrovani’s drawings (which at times can integrate weaving, folding or pinholes) are challenging for the eye. They often playfully unfurl in series and sequences, based on kinetic protocols and gravity laws. Her abstract hoses (connected to nothing in particular apart from themselves) and restless whirlpools, with their agility to cause us dizzy visions, appear at first glance, as a conceptual art tool synthesizing time, space and body movements in one (transmutable) pattern or
language. Behind their minimalistic claim for serendipity and profound stimuli for free movement and improvised directions, Khosrovani’s drawings elegantly attenuate the painstaking hours (days and nights) of work invested in shaping the infinitesimal veins and tubal ligations of the hose. Hence the positions taken by it and by Khosrovani’s work feel as much physical as conceptual.

During the preparatory process, photography plays a key role, as a capsule of the infinite contortions and squirming in which the hose consumes and animates itself; even though Khosrovani works simultaneously from mechanic reproductions and “real life” movements of the “plastic snakes”. The flawless photographic memory (and the overlap of multiple smaller preparatory drawings) encapsuled in the trials and tribulations of the hose, somehow survives in Khosrovani’s both hyperrealist and abstract technique. Her pencil becomes a seismographer which captures the unpredictable moves and circles of a seemingly non-human force (potentially
constrained by human influence or technicity but taken out of our sight).
The ambivalence of the hose, as an “anti-form” physical object and an unseizable designed pattern, goes with its psychoanalytic (and even sexual) interpretations; which could be well explained by an original break or rupture in which the hose becomes fundamentally divided: between a subject and an object of desire, between giving and receiving (going in and going out), between taking shape and losing
shape; feeling apart in the very act of coming together or finding his/her own or other half. But this psychoanalytic ambivalence actually doesn’t cover the entire subconscious territory of the migrating hose (framed/zoomed in and out).
It can be extended to the deeply personal childhood memory of the typical Tehran garden or courtyard, where the artist (and every Iranian child) used to play with that hose. The drawings also record the incarnated and “tactile” memory of that specific plastic, quite rigid, and difficult to unfurl in a straight line. They bring back an almost
physical battle for the child, confronted to a formless and unseizable plastic animal, escaping the hands of the child by its endless and fierce twists.
Eventually the entire extent of the fundamental visual ambivalence, felt in the formless and infinite shapes of one physical pattern and protocol, also comprises the contemporary political connotation. Nowadays such forms, beyond their bold erotic potential, their playfulness and optical stimulation, cannot but remind us the highly
political metaphor of the “cables” running our globalized digital economy. Beginning with the submarine cables routes, made for controlling the cloud memory, entailing a transborder data war and mutual surveillance between the powers of United States, China and others…
As a matter of fact, the infinity and serendipity of interconnectedness and channel making that fuel in Khosrovani’s drawings invades our stable subjectivity. Hence they spread out beyond the lines of personal traumas and intersubjective reconciliation or those of a self-centered and a decentered visual system. They are reversible like a glove that can be worn from the inside or the outside, providing two different
identities – always an overwhelming (beginningless, endless) dance.

Les œuvres présentées ici par Maryam Khosravani témoignent avant tout d’une immersion personnelle de l’artiste dans les règles à la fois géométriques et métaphysiques qui régissent les liens entre l’architecture de l’espace du jardin, la culture visuelle de la miniature et les rêves ou une certaine psychologie liés à l’eau – notamment dans la culture iranienne. Les œuvres sur papier, d’une délicatesse assumée, sont le terrain privilégié d’expérimentations chromatiques et symboliques qui tirent, justement, les motifs floraux ou aquatiques vers une abstraction organique. Chaque épreuve travaillée dans une technique différente – le stylo, l’aiguille, le collage – est mise en œuvre à la manière d’une reconstitution de technique traditionnelle comme la céramique, la peinture sur miroir ou encore la gravure sur métal... mais sur papier.

Le travail de Maryam Khosravani est certes une archive méticuleuse de motifs, capable de nous faire traverser des siècles d’iconographie à travers des gestes minimalistes et radicaux ; c’est aussi un palimpseste de techniques, de supports et d’outils optiques dédiés traditionnellement à la conception architecturale du jardin. Ce dernier doit se composer, dans l’idéal-type iranien et de nombreux endroits d’Asie, d’un jardin central traversé en forme de croix par quatre cours d’eau, eux-mêmes entourés d’un parterre de fleurs, puis d’arbres. Tous ces éléments peuvent se retrouver dans les œuvres ici présentées par Maryam Khosravani : par images zoomées voire flashbacks visuels (ou olfactifs avec l’installation des cubes au sol qui sont des urnes à parfum), mais aussi images manquantes ou semi-abstraites. A la manière d’une archéologue déchiffrant des signes et des codes oubliés, Maryam Khosravani déjoue finement la frontière artiste/artisan, en questionnant la disparition et la survivance de ces motifs aujourd’hui ; ou la possibilité de les faire circuler en dehors de leur cadre d’origine – tels des motifs en exil.

Morad Montazami, director of Zamân Books & Curating

Duo exhibition of MARYAM KHOSROVANI and KAVEH IRANI

Hamzianpour & KIa gallery | Los Angeles

Pencil on Arches paper, Sewing on paper - 2023

Maryam Khosrovani and Kaveh Irani are both visual artists who studied art in Iran before moving abroad and becoming part of the “diaspora”, and relocating to the United States and Europe. Both artists were active around the turn of the 2010s, and the peak in the internationalization of “Iranian contemporary art”, which was an
intense period of calls and opportunities provided by western institutions to Iranian artists. While the year 2010 and onward saw the rise of a speculative and unstable Iranian art market, it eventually led to a worse situation during the years of Donald Trump’s presidential mandates. Economic depression, reduced mobility and post-
diasporic rupture then became the rule for a majority of Iranian artists – in and out their homeland. To quote the artist Nil Yalter: “Exile is a hard job”. Maryam Khosravani and Kaveh Irani, who developed their core practice in this conflictual context, are from a generation who understood displacement and transitional spaces as not temporary but rather permanent; a generation who experienced the dark days
of globalization, or its conservative and at times racist backlash; a generation who is often challenged in its physical movements and travel conditions, running out the
present time and envisioning “intubated futures” but also “limitless extensions”.
Unlike a vast number of Iranian artists highlighted since the years 2000 on the international scene, Khosrovani and Irani work against the grain of identity politics and Iranianness; one rarely observes orientalist imagery (rugs, miniature and birds), ayatollahs caricatured or veiled fashionistas in their works. They rather cultivate a kind of distorted minimalism, more influenced by the infrastructure of globalization
(and non-verbal communication tools) than its dreamed representations and touristic visions. Their Iranian experience, language and background remain active, but it plays more as a conceptual or philosophical spectrum than an identity pattern or
commodity. The captivating dialogue conveyed by their reunion; a similar sense of ironic distance with identity issues and their own “transitory” condition, make these two artists emblematic of a new path or phase – post-exoticism, post-diasporic, post-
internet.
Maryam Khosravani’s drawings (which at times can integrate weaving, folding or pinholes) are challenging for the eye. They often playfully unfurl in series and sequences, based on kinetic protocols and gravity laws. Her abstract hoses (connected to nothing in particular apart from themselves) and restless whirlpools, with their agility to cause us dizzy visions, appear at first glance, as a conceptual art tool synthesizing time, space and body movements in one (transmutable) pattern or
language. Behind their minimalistic claim for serendipity and profound stimuli for free movement and improvised directions, Khosravani’s drawings elegantly attenuate the painstaking hours (days and nights) of work invested in shaping the infinitesimal veins and tubal ligations of the hose. Hence the positions taken by it and by Khosrovani’s work feel as much physical as conceptual.

During the preparatory process, photography plays a key role, as a capsule of the infinite contortions and squirming in which the hose consumes and animates itself; even though Khosrovani works simultaneously from mechanic reproductions and “real life” movements of the “plastic snakes”. The flawless photographic memory (and the overlap of multiple smaller preparatory drawings) encapsuled in the trials and tribulations of the hose, somehow survives in Khosrovani’s both hyperrealist and abstract technique. Her pencil becomes a seismographer which captures the unpredictable moves and circles of a seemingly non-human force (potentially
constrained by human influence or technicity but taken out of our sight).
The ambivalence of the hose, as an “anti-form” physical object and an unseizable designed pattern, goes with its psychoanalytic (and even sexual) interpretations; which could be well explained by an original break or rupture in which the hose becomes fundamentally divided: between a subject and an object of desire, between giving and receiving (going in and going out), between taking shape and losing
shape; feeling apart in the very act of coming together or finding his/her own or other half. But this psychoanalytic ambivalence actually doesn’t cover the entire subconscious territory of the migrating hose (framed/zoomed in and out).
It can be extended to the deeply personal childhood memory of the typical Tehran garden or courtyard, where the artist (and every Iranian child) used to play with that hose. The drawings also record the incarnated and “tactile” memory of that specific plastic, quite rigid, and difficult to unfurl in a straight line. They bring back an almost
physical battle for the child, confronted to a formless and unseizable plastic animal, escaping the hands of the child by its endless and fierce twists.
Eventually the entire extent of the fundamental visual ambivalence, felt in the formless and infinite shapes of one physical pattern and protocol, also comprises the contemporary political connotation. Nowadays such forms, beyond their bold erotic potential, their playfulness and optical stimulation, cannot but remind us the highly
political metaphor of the “cables” running our globalized digital economy. Beginning with the submarine cables routes, made for controlling the cloud memory, entailing a transborder data war and mutual surveillance between the powers of United States, China and others…
As a matter of fact, the infinity and serendipity of interconnectedness and channel making that fuel in Khosrovani’s drawings invades our stable subjectivity. Hence they spread out beyond the lines of personal traumas and intersubjective reconciliation or those of a self-centered and a decentered visual system. They are reversible like a glove that can be worn from the inside or the outside, providing two different
identities – always an overwhelming (beginningless, endless) dance.

Habiter un lieu dont on sait qu’il va disparaitre

Césure | 2023

Needle on Arches paper | Paris | 2023

Que faire quand la fin est déjà écrite ? Et qu’elle est imminente ?
Quels ancrages trouver dans un monde en perpétuel mouvement ?
Comment ferait un escargot privé de sa coquille-maison ?
Il y a des corps, des souvenirs, des images et des projections à venir qui accompagnent les espaces que l’on traverse, dans lesquels on s’arrête, dans lesquels on s’installe, mais pour combien de temps ?

Ancien campus de la fac de Censier-Daubenton, lieu de souvenirs de plusieurs générations, d’agrégations de corps, de savoirs et de pensées, Césure est devenue un abri temporaire pour des porteur·euses de projets, des artistes, des associations, des idées, qui s’expérimentent pendant une période donnée. Cette idée d’état transitoire, en suspens, entre deux mouvements d’une même mélodie est le point de départ des voyages que les artistes, performeur·euses et transmetteur·euses de messages vers d’autres mondes réuni·es pour l’occasion expérimentent dans leurs pratiques.

Photography, mixed media | 26x33 cm | Elga Wimmer Gallery | Chelsea | 2019 | NewYork

Imaginary Connections is a mixed-media project I started four years ago upon moving to NYC.
The sight of New Yorkers drawing their clothes on drying lines outside their windows would trigger an imagination of the life behind those windows and the people that wear those clothes. Their life clashed with my solitude, which I resolved by blurring the lines between the buildings in a series of plastered replicas of the photos.
The project aims to illustrate the way garment, architecture, and people are bound to one another to become one.

Photography, mixed media | 26x33 cm | Elga Wimmer Gallery | Chelsea | 2019 | NewYork

Imaginary Connections is a mixed-media project I started four years ago upon moving to NYC.
The sight of New Yorkers drawing their clothes on drying lines outside their windows would trigger an imagination of the life behind those windows and the people that wear those clothes. Their life clashed with my solitude, which I resolved by blurring the lines between the buildings in a series of plastered replicas of the photos.
The project aims to illustrate the way garment, architecture, and people are bound to one another to become one.

Photography, mixed media | 26x33 cm | Elga Wimmer Gallery | Chelsea | 2019 | NewYork

Imaginary Connections is a mixed-media project I started four years ago upon moving to NYC.
The sight of New Yorkers drawing their clothes on drying lines outside their windows would trigger an imagination of the life behind those windows and the people that wear those clothes. Their life clashed with my solitude, which I resolved by blurring the lines between the buildings in a series of plastered replicas of the photos.
The project aims to illustrate the way garment, architecture, and people are bound to one another to become one.

Atari game - Embroidery - 21 x 15 cm each

Atari video games I used to play in my childhood. I embroidered Atari game figures on the Fustian fabric. The actual games are projected on my embroideries and visitors can hear is a chaotic mix of the Atari’s games sound in the space.

Blanket - 3m x 3m - embroidery

A patchwork blanket is placed on a wooden table we call Korsi (A Korsi is a type of low table in Iran, with a heater underneath it, and blankets thrown over it). A korsi used to be quite popular for an entire family during the winter to gather together. The game of dots and Boxes is sewed on the patchwork blanket with the initial of kids who died in Syria during the war.

I remember during winter my mom was always putting a table with a very colorful blanket on top, she was telling us stories and it was the best place to gather us together. She was always sewing and making all these beautiful patchworks, looking at her while sewing was one of my best memories I have from my childhood.

Years ago I was listening to a kid reportage from Syria, the reporter was asking him what was his greatest wish, his answer was a blanket to make him warm.
My mom and this little boy were my reasons to make a huge patchwork blanket dedicated to kids in war. The game of dots and Boxes which was a game we were playing when we were kids is sewed on the patchwork blanket.

Chook and Dokht (boy and girl) are fabric dolls from south of Iran. These little dolls are out of a special red fabric from Iran. Two tombs containing little red fabric dolls standing on two boxes made of mirror hanging from the ceiling like a swing.

Work in progress - Installation

Je suis née un an après le début de la guerre entre l’Iran et l’Irak à Téhéran. Lorsque les forces de l’air irakiennes attaquaient la ville, un grand cercle rouge s’affichait sur les écrans de télévision ac-compagnée du son terrifiant des alarmes qui annonçaient les attaques aériennes, et nous devions alors prendre refuge en un lieu sûr. Notre lieu de refuge était le sous-sol de notre maison. Cela fut ma première expérience de la peur. J’étais très petite alors, et je ne comprenais pas les horreurs de la guerre, mais je voyais bien la peur dans le regard des adultes. Malgré les conditions terribles et sin-gulières de l’Iran, c’est de ce sous-sol que proviennent les meilleurs souvenirs de mon enfance. Là-bas nous jouions, nous criions et chantions ensemble. Pour une enfant qui ne comprenait pas bien le sens de la guerre, ces jours-là étaient des jours bienheureux. J’ai émigré pour la première fois à cinq ans, à vrai dire c’était une fuite des conditions qui régis-saient l’Iran. Une des scènes fortes dont je me souviens est le moment tragique où m’a mère, ayant aligné toutes mes poupées près de la porte, me demanda de leur de leur dire au revoir, je n’ou-blierais jamais leur regard rivé sur moi. La guerre m’a très vite séparée de mon enfance, et nous sommes parties à la recherche d’un endroit que l’on pourrait appeler un chez-soi. En entrant dans notre nouvelle maison, j’ai compris ce que cela était de se sentir en sécurité, encore aujourd’hui, l’odeur de cette ville, ses couleurs, ses sons, sont comme un baume au coeur. Mon projet est un ensemble de 7 installations de jouets et jeux de l’enfance, dans la peur et l’anxiété des chambres closes d’une maison, je cherche à transmettre le sentiment de cette situation au spec-tateur. Les jeux seraient représentés à l’aide de divers matériaux comme le fer, le tissu, le papier, etc. Ces installations sont liées entre elles. Pouvoir rejoindre cette résidence artistique, me donnerait la possibilité de réconcilier avec ces émotions compliquées. Je pourrais retrouver cette part impor-tante de mon enfance et l’ambiance de cette époque, je n’ai aucun doute qu’inconsciemment des éléments cruciaux à ce projet se révèleront à moi, et que ma présence dans cette ville saura enrichir et influencer mon travail et mes idées. Indépendamment de cette dimension émotionnelle, cela m’ouvre à un nouvel espace qui me permet d’être en contact avec le milieu professionnel et d’autres artistes.Il est certain que ma présence dans l’environnement de cette ville et son milieu complètera une grande partie de mon travail actuelle, et étoffera mon projet. Il est important pour moi que mon projet aboutisse dans une ville qui est pour moi comme ma maison. Cela fait presque vingt ans que j’enseigne aux enfants, et une grande partie de ma vie se déroule dans le monde des enfants, aux côtés de leurs émotions, de leur langue, de leurs jeux, se perdre dans les mimiques de leur visage, leurs corps qui essayent de dialoguer avec nous et qui tentent de transmettre leurs émotions par ce biais. Devenir leur camarade de jeux et faire l’expérience de leur réalité m’a permis de me rapprocher de leur monde intérieur, de connaitre leur moindre petit geste et de saisir ce qui leur fait mal, et qui peut influencer leurs vie par la suite. D’un autre coté, lorsque l’on travaille avec des enfants ou qu’on a soi-même des enfants il arrive souvent que l’on soit con-fronté à sa propre enfance. Des images nous reviennent, alors qu’elles étaient restées enfouies des années durant dans un coin de votre mémoire; les enfants peuvent révéler ces images. À chaque fois que je fais cette expérience, je m’en retrouve étourdis et me demande pourquoi j’ai conservé ce souvenir dans mon inconscient. Je suis le fil. Il arrive très souvent que ces souvenirs aient à voir avec la guerre, et je comprends que les années décisives à la construction de ma personne se soient déroulées dans la peur et l’insécurité. La maison est censée être le lieu de la sécurité dans l’enfance, cependant il faut dire que pour les gens de ma génération, ainsi que pour tout enfant ayant grandi au coeur d’un conflit, ce sentiment de sécurité au sein de leur maison n’a pas pu être ressenti. Et que la peur et l’anxiété sont deux sen-timents qui sans le vouloir, ont infiltré nos enfances et marqué nos vies adultes... Mon projet a vu le jour après ma rencontre avec un enfant syrien dans un camp. Je lui ai demandé quel était son plus grand souhait. L’enfant m’a répondu qu’il voulait une couverture, parce qu’ici la
nuit la nuit il fait froid. J’ai confectionné une couverture, et c’est avec le souhait de cet enfant syrien qu’a commencé mon projet. Le projet de ces 7 installations mettra en scène des objets de l’enfance qui portent le signe de la guerre. Dans la première installation, je veux mettre en scène à peu près 600 avions-origami, recrée à l’aide de métal brulé. Ces avions de métal seront suspendus à la manière d’un mobile au-dessus du lit d’un enfant. Le lit de l’enfant serait très petit, et le mobile aurait la proportion d’un chandelier. J’ai rassemblé près de 250 berceuses du monde entier, ces berceuses sous forme de texte et fichier audio seront diffusées pendant installation .La deuxième installation serait deux tombeaux recouverts de miroir, et suspendus au plafond comme une balançoire. Des petites poupées en tissus rouges à l’effigie de garçon et de filles, dor-ment dans les deux tombeaux suspendus. Au sud de l’Iran, on appelle ces poupées Dokht et Chouk, garçon et fille. La troisième installation sont 12 écrans jeu vidéo de guerre Atari brodé sur des toiles de lin, le son de ces jeux vidéos seront simultanément diffusés dans l’espace de l’installation. La quatrième installation est une couverture en patchwork (composé de différent tissu), sur laquelle est brodé un jeu de pipopipette (jeu des petits carrés) composé des initiales des prénoms des enfants victimes du conflit syrien. Ces quarante morceaux sont étalés sur une table en bois que nous ap-pelons Korsi en Iran. Le korsi est une sorte de table basse carrée, sous laquelle se trouve un brasier, on recouvre la table d’une grande couverture. Tout au long de l’hiver, le korsi est le lieu autour duquel se rassemblent les familles.La cinquième installation est constituée de 240 figures en relief fait de plâtre différentes, représen-tant des jouets d’enfants. Chaque figure aura une dimension de 21.5 par 10.5 sur 5 centimètres, la taille d’une brique. Cette installation représente le moment de séparation de l’enfance. Comme si tous les jouets se transforment en figures en relief. L’espace de ce projet est une maison. Une maison dérobée de son sens de sécurité. Je veux que mon public, à l’instant même où il est confronté à l’une de ces installations, sa présence dans cette es-pace s’accompagne du sentiment de peur et d’insécurité. Je veux qu’il ne puisse pas anticiper les évènements suivants, et qu’il progresse dans l’espace avec anxiété et appréhension. En passant de chambre à chambre par des couloirs si étroits qu’ils ne peuvent être empruntés que par une person-ne. Un lieu dans la pénombre, et un autre très éclairé, accompagné des sons des différentes cham-bres. Je veux qu’il se confronte aux jeux enfantins de notre enfance, seulement les jeux sont comme les tortures que l’ont fait subir à des prisonniers politiques, et on les fait subir à des enfants. Des tor-tures que les adultes ne supportent pas de lire dans un journal, et qu’un enfant de la guerre vit au quotidien. Je veux que même la chaleur prodiguée par la couverture sur laquelle on s’assoit pour se tenir chaud angoisse. Et qu’à chaque instant on s’attende à un évènement terrible. Nous les enfants de la guerre, 30 ans après les faits nous vivons toujours avec cette peur. Avec ce projet je veux jusqu’au possible tirer le portait de la peur d’un enfant ayant grandis au royaume de la guerre. Et peut-être l’espace d’un instant mettre mon spectateur à la place de cet en-fant. Peut-être je pourrais transmettre la perte de sens et l’absurde que vivent ces enfants de la guerre. Ce projet est basé sur de nombreuses investigations sur les enfants de la guerre, leurs jeux, et le nombre d’enfants victimes de ces conflits. J’ai joint des esquisses de ce projet dans mon port-folio.

Plaster - 300 reliefs - 21.5 x 10.5 x 5 cm each
With this project I’m trying to register the moment of detachment from your childhood and to make a relief wall made of plaster, covered with toys and childhood accessories.

In memory of passengers of the flight ps752 - Colored pencils on paper - 165 drawing, A5 each - 2020

Incantations; "Incubus, Succubus, Pendulus", together seem to compose a magical secret formula. The visual presentation is an invasion in trying to penetrate visually into these magical secret words. Showered with white, the three illustrated series of sculptured pieces are to picture the essence of purity and hygiene.
The first series presented: "Incubus" (male demon), is composed of elements such as; tooth brush, lip stick... imbedded into white cubical plaster structures.
The second series presented "Succubus" (female demon) is composed of elements such as; soap, toothpaste tube, sponge... (which you can see the different forms of the hymen).
The third series presented "Pendulus"- suspended, hanging lose, and undecided, is an installation using stockings and is to permit the viewer to enter into the magical world of a white virgin space through a narrow slit.
Finally, this presentation is a condensed multi sensational personal experience proposing a dominant look at the subject matter.

Aun Gallery | Tehran | 2012

Photo by: Dadbeh Basir, Asal Kazemian

Video by: Sam Lankarani

Un incube (du latin « incubus » qui signifie « couché sur » ou « couver une chose ») est un démon mâle au comportement lubrique. Souvent représenté comme une bête velue et hirsute, voire avec des pieds de boucs, il se pose sur la poitrine d’une femme endormie qu’il cherche à abuser sexuellement. Tenu par les théologiens chrétiens pour un avatar du diable, les Grecs eux l’assimile à une vision de cauchemar (l’italien « incubo » signifie « cauchemar »). La psychiatrie moderne classe les apparitions d’incubes parmi les visions hallucinatoires liées à une déviance libidinale. d’un peigne,... chacun incrusté ou capitonné dans un petit cube de plâtre blanc. La deuxième série «Succubus» (le démon femelle) réunit une boîte de poudre, une éponge, un savon, des cotons démaquillants cousus, décousus, couverts et découverts de longs fils blancs. La troisième série «Pendulus» en suspension, en mouvement, est une installation qui, par une déchirure, une fente, nous invite à pénétrer dans un espace dont la blancheur virginale laisse affleurer cette part de magie que détiennent les territoires de l’intime. Ces créations qui condensent une expérience multi-sensorielle, proposent un regard sur le sexe féminin débarrassé de l’imaginaire dominant.

“Incubus”, Latin word for what covers something, is also the name for a lustful male demon. This demon visits the chest of a woman in her sleep and extorts her. Christian theologists represented it as a form of the devil, while Greeks associated it to the vision of nightmare. Its Italian form, “Incubo” signifies nightmare. Modern psychiatry classifies these apparitions as hallucinations tied to libido deviance. This series represents this and traps it within a small white paster cube.

Photo by: 

Aun Gallery | Tehran | 2012

La succube (du latin "succuba" qui signifie "concubine" ou "couché dessous") est le pendant féminin de l'incube. C'est un démon femelle, ou qui prend une femme féminine, voire celle de la femme défunte, pour séduire un homme durant son sommeil puis l'abandonner pour le punir de sa traîtrise. De nature ambivalente, on l'associe souvent a la déesse mésopotamienne Lilith qui encourage les femmes à jouir de leur corps. La succube est aussi réputée pour voler la semence de l'homme lorsqu'elle tombe à terre, afin de tenter une reproduction sans son consentement.

“Succubus” is the name for a female demon that reciprocates with Incubus. Similarly, it seeks revenge on a man’s wrong doing. The Latin word “Succuba”, which signifies what lies under. Succubus is also ambivalently associated with Lilith, Mesopotamian goddess, that encourages women to seek pleasure with their bodies. Succubus also has the reputation of taking the essence of man and using it to reproduce without consent. This series includes a box of powder, a sponge, soap, threaded makeup pads with long white.

Theater poster for a castrated Ghajar King (Agha Mohammad Khan Ghajar)
Ali Rafie – Director

Aun Gallery | Tehran | 2012

Photo by: Jean Louis Bloch Lainé

Du latin qui signifie « pendu », « en suspens », « qui effectue le mouvement d'un pendule » mais aussi « inconstant, changeant, indécis ». « Helophilus Pendulus » désigne une espèce d'insecte volant, entre la mouche et l'abeille, qui butine les fleurs en été. Dans l’ouvrage du biologiste Ernst Haeckel, Les Formes artistiques de la nature (1899-1904), on trouve des planches représentant des plantestelles que le « Monocaulus Pendulus », entre autres éponges calcaires, méduses, siphonophores et végétations marines aux formes volubiles et pendantes.

“Pendulus”, is a Latin word that refers to what is suspended, alludes to the movement of a pendulum, and represents what is inconstant, changing, and indecisive. In addition, “Helophilus Pendulus” refers to a species of flying insect, between a fly and bee that forages summer flowers. Biologist Ernst Haeckel, in Art Forms of Nature (1899-1904), illustrates “Monoculus Pendulus”, such as other calcareous sponges, jellyfish, Siphonophores, and various marine vegetation that have hanging forms. This installation is marked by a rip, which is an invitation to enter. The space within represents pure white virginity, which holds a magic that intimacy creates. This multi-sense experience shows an angle of female sex stripped of dominance.

Aun Gallery | Tehran | 2012

Colored pencil on Arches paper - 46 x 61 cm - 2022

I created a microscopic artbook, which consist of 300 pages. Only with a microscope you could see the writings and art works by famous international artists. The idea behind this work was that even if our culture was hidden, and you would only see through a microscope it would still be visible. Our culture can never be lost or vanished into thin air.

France | 2015

The nuclear agreement between the United States and Iran

Brooklyn | 2015

Photo London, Somerset House - 66 x 50 cm each - 2019

I think a thing. A thing is a thing. Nothing is a thing. I think nothing. I think a thought. je pense une chose, une chose est une chose, un rien est une chose, je pense un rien, je pense une pensée.