My art of the last 20 years has engaged, subverted and satirized our cartoonish stereotypes of faraway people and places, and our notions of the exotic. My work also responds to unacknowledged global appropriation of the art of Iran and its neighbors —a region often skipped over or lumped together, despite its expansive cultural influence.
I am driven by the expressive potential of Persian art. My work exploits the movement and eye-travel of Persian art, and the rich textures and complex patterns of Persian tilework, pushed with heightened drama. My work’s cartoonish satire, punk-feminist viscerality, and bold, direct voice was a rejection of the poetic sensibility deeply valued in Persian art and culture. At the outset of my artistic project, I felt that the repression in Iran, and America’s policies and framing of Iran have called for an alternative, non-poetic version of a Persian aesthetic, one that paid tribute to unheard Iranian exuberance and rage, and one that finds an expression for the maddening contradictions between crude stereotypes and rich inspiration, propaganda and humanity.
While rich with layers of meaning and intense feeling, my work is enjoyed as an engaging visual experience. In person, my paintings shimmer with tactile, bas-relief surfaces inspired by Iran’s ceramics, enamel and jewelry. Viewers enjoy the rich, jewel-like surfaces, as well as the human touch. Viewers often mention other visual associations in my work, to Chinese Blue and White ceramics, Majolica, Azulejos, Medieval European art, and Matisse. These associations are enough, and give me great joy. I intentionally interweave my Persian influences with other visual histories which developed, in part, from precedents established in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. My use of ornamentation is, by design, intended to create a space of seamless global connectedness, and to resist erasure.