I grew up during one of the most turbulent periods of contemporary Iran, a time marked by war, political upheaval, and an education system shaped by fear and ideological control. I still remember the day our primary school principal interrupted class to introduce a student who had fled the war. It was the moment I realized that peace was not something to be taken for granted. School became a place of surveillance, rigid discipline, and fear, where daily rituals and religious doctrine often overshadowed curiosity and imagination. Like many children of my generation, I experienced childhood alongside war and cultural revolution, learning to navigate a world where uncertainty, loss, and control became part of everyday life long before I could fully understand them.
Yet within this environment, there were moments of escape. Every summer, I retreated to my father's agricultural fields, surrounded by endless wheat and open skies. Away from judgment and observation, nature offered a different way of seeing the world. It became a place of freedom, discovery, and quiet reflection. Encouraged by my father, I immersed myself in painting, books, and music. These experiences did not erase the realities I had witnessed, but they provided another language through which to process and understand them. Through nature and creativity, I discovered spaces where imagination could exist beyond fear.
Since then, art and nature have remained inseparable sources of resilience, self-awareness, and liberation. They allow me to enter difficult territories of memory, trauma, and emotion while remaining connected to possibility and hope. My artistic practice emerges from this tension between vulnerability and endurance, confinement and freedom, loss and transformation.
My work explores themes of alienation, displacement, fragility, and the shifting boundaries of identity. I am drawn to forms that appear compressed, fractured, or transformed, reflecting both personal experiences and broader social realities. Through these figures, I investigate the psychological effects of displacement, systems of control, and the ways in which individuals adapt to environments marked by uncertainty. Rather than seeking certainty or fixed conclusions, I embrace ambiguity, change, and doubt. I believe that questioning what appears stable or permanent is essential to remaining fully alive and open to transformation.
Ultimately, my work is an attempt to preserve the sense of wonder I briefly experienced as a child wandering through those fields—a state of openness before fear narrowed perception and before the complexities of the world imposed themselves upon consciousness. I continue to search for forms that invite empathy, curiosity, and reflection, imagining a world in which we might recover the generosity, imagination, and sense of possibility that belong so naturally to childhood.