"Love Note to Liberty"
2019
Helium, Acrylic Balloon 10 feet in diameter, Key to the Statue of Liberty issued by the state of New York in 1925, yoke ring out of Caution tape and mixed media, Ceramic Tiles, and Iranian Calligraphy 2019.
Installed at Hopkins Center for Arts in Hopkins, MN for the collaborative exhibition, "Earth is Broken, Earth is Whole". In collaboration with Forrest Middleton, ceramicist/Artist, who has made the tiles installed under the balloon and Arash Shirinbab an Iranian calligrapher, this area was turned into a site-specific installation that centers the balloon. In conversation with Arash we selected a Kurdish poem "The Wall" / Deewar/ دیوار by Shirko Bikas:
Good day/My name is wall/Born in a public street/ I am as long as resentment and as tall as anger/there isn't any motto or slogan(political) that aren't hanging from my body/posters too are covering my body/But for what end?/From a hundred slogan there isn't even one that teaches me something good/From hundred posters there isn't one that makes me feel content or happy/It was yesterday/They covered my head to toe with a slogan/ When I read it/I was full of shame/Shame of being a wall in a land that hangs such big lies on me!
The work is an ever-changing sculpture. The yoke weighs down the balloon, preventing it from flying away. The balloon slowly deflates until it becomes skinny enough to drop the yoke. Because the balloon has lost so much helium in the process, it stays in place because of this loss.
