BODIES LEFT BEHIND
COLLABORATION WITH NOOSHIN HAKIM AS PART OF JEROME FELLOWSHIP AWARD AT FRANCONIA SCULPTURE PARK, PUBLIC SCULPTURE, AIRPLANE WINGS AND STEEL, 34'X34'X17', 2017.
Crossing a border is a potent act both psychologically and socio-politically. Passing through Borders can have dire consequences if the body who conducts the act of crossing does not enjoy the privileges that make borders for those who enjoy them, merely formalities and something invisible. The human desire of being mobilized has even taken up wings as a result of the imagination of generations resonating in our minds to fly beyond the sunrise or sunset, beyond the horizon and the oceans where dreams of being free begin. However, this simple desire becomes almost a nightmare based on one’s place of birth or the color of skin. Although the dream knows no border, no geography, no color, it does not care for confinement or for restrictions even if that dream comes with a high price even if it is leaving something dear behind.
In a way immigration can have such connotations; it is a dilemma of the body in which things around one stop to happen mostly based on one’s qualifications, potential, and dreams. They happen due to the place of birth and the color of the skin. This disorientation can be so deep as if the body is being left behind and this vessel has just carried the dreams to a new land, the wings have crossed over but the body has been left behind.
Our wings are suspended and strained under a dome which in Iranian culture has been a symbol of the oneness of the universe and the world itself.