Premio Combat Prize

Tracing the Unknown
Accidents, change, and chance occur without bias in different ways. Accepting them allows us to see their significance.
My work honors these elements from process to concept. Elements of chance permeate the painting process and often manifest as dripping colors and organic shapes. The crumpled, ruined, and discarded papers with their irregular and accidental shapes, represent our crushed thoughts, wishes, and dreams with traces of different experiences we had.
In my color pallet, I incorporate colors from natural flowers and spices, such as borage, saffron, henna, tea, coffee, and earth pigments.
These “natural” colors are prepared and behave differently from synthetic paints.
I can never predict with certainty the shade or the hue I will get.
The exact color that I create, unknown in its own process of construction, is only available in that moment; I must co-create & exist in harmony in that moment, with the uncertainty & evanescence.
My work often repeats the Farsi calligraphy (“To be”, “I am”, “It is”). These conjugations of “being” visually connect other elements in my work – in the same way “being” connects us all.