In my earlier works, I often began a painting with a clear understanding of what I was depicting, and as a result, certain textures were already envisioned in advance. During that period, I felt a strong sense of commitment to the subject itself, an attempt to remain faithful to the character I was painting, similar to the approach of a documentary photographer who seeks to register the presence of their subject without excessive intervention. This sense of fidelity shaped and, to some extent, limited my decisions regarding texture and material.

In my more recent works, this relationship has shifted. Due to a change in both conceptual approach and in my engagement with painterly materials, the paint itself and the act of painting, I no longer begin with a predetermined image. What exists at the outset is a condition rather than a form: a tension, a compression, or a state of stillness. Textures emerge through the process of working, through the interaction between my body and the painted surface, shaped by time, repetition, pauses, and occasionally by the resistance of the material. At this stage, textures are not merely visual qualities but traces of a process in which control and release are continuously negotiated.

For me, the primary challenge lies not in the difference between face and form, but in the assumptions each carries. The face, particularly in painting, is read almost immediately and is quickly drawn into realms of recognition, psychology, and projection. This readability can function as both strength and limitation. At this stage of my practice, that limitation feels more pronounced within painting, as I am drawn toward addressing identity less directly and instead allowing other, less visible layers of queerness and selfhood to emerge. Rendering these layers through painting feels more challenging to me than working through sculpture.

In contrast, sculpture offers a more open field of articulation, particularly through material. The materials I use in my sculptural works each carry their own associations and point to different layers of the questions I am interested in addressing. Because of this, I often feel more at ease articulating these concerns through sculpture. It allows me to approach identity not as something immediately recognizable, but as a condition that is experienced, shaped through bodily encounter, scale, weight, and its relationship to space.

One reaction that has stayed with me dates back to my first exhibition in Toronto, when a portrait of a queer Iranian close friend, was shown for the first time. The painting was presented within a mirrored frame that I constructed myself, its form inspired by Iranian miniature traditions and incorporating fragmented mirrors, an element deeply rooted in Iranian visual culture. Shee was the first person to encounter hierself not through an everyday mirror, but through the mediated image of her own portrait.

What complicated this encounter was physical distance. As she stepped back from the work, she simultaneously saw the painted portrait of herself and he own fragmented reflection in the mirrors. This layered confrontation, with the painted image, the reflected body, and the fractured self, transformed the reading of the portrait into a multi-layered experience. For me, the significance of this moment lies in how identity emerges not as a fixed or singular image, but as something open to questioning and re-reading; a condition in which seeing oneself is always accompanied by distance, fragmentation, and reflection.

For me, Silent Stars was not a moment of release after restriction, but a continuation of an already ongoing trajectory. Before leaving Iran, I had a solo exhibition Hot Blossom in Tehran, that engaged with queerness through indirect and metaphorical language. That experience clarified for me how meaning can circulate even within limitation. I see Silent Stars as unfolding from the same logic, with differences in context and degrees of articulation rather than in the underlying structure of the work.

One of the most lasting lessons I took from studying graphic design is my relationship to text. Writing has always been more than a communicative tool for me; it functions as both a visual and conceptual element. This approach has carried directly into my art practice. In my paintings and sculptures, text consistently appears in different forms—embedded within the image, placed along the edges, or materialized through scratches, prints, or inscriptions on materials such as soap. I see this ongoing engagement with text as a way of adding another layer of meaning, and one that stems directly from my background in graphic design.

For a significant period of my practice, conversation played an important role. I often began within my circle of Iranian and non-Iranian queer friends, or through introductions from others, engaging in long conversations before painting them. Getting to know someone prior to representing them mattered to me, as I believe the way one knows a subject directly shapes how they are depicted. During this time, I kept a notebook where I recorded names, dates, and fragments of these encounters and coversation, and the portraits emerged in relation to those personal exchanges.

This approach continued roughly until 2024. Since then, my focus has shifted. Rather than working primarily from real individuals, I’ve also moved toward portraits that emerge from imagination, visual memory, or fleeting encounters, such as a face seen briefly in the street. While documenting the lived presence of specific people was once central to my work, my current practice prioritizes other conceptual and different layers of the image.

Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and Jacques Lacan’s Mirror Stage have been key in shaping how I think about identity as unstable, constructed, and mediated through image and repetition.

Iranian culture informs my work beyond historical research through lived experience and visual memory. Political, social, cultural, and aesthetic layers shaped in Iran are present in my practice, but one symbol that has remained deeply formative for me is mirror work. As a child, I remember visiting mosques and historic interiors across different Iranian cities, where the spaces were entirely covered with fragmented mirrors. I would try to see my reflection, but instead of encountering a unified image, my face would break into countless pieces, I could never see myself as a single portrait.

That experience stayed with me. Later, as I began working with mirrors in my own practice, I realized that what I was searching for was not just the material itself, but that specific form of Iranian mirror work and the unresolved questions it produced. I learned the technique from an Iranian mirror artist and began incorporating it into my work as a way of returning to that early experience, revisiting fragmentation, visibility, and the impossibility of a fixed or singular self.

Yes, there is one work I feel particularly connected to. It’s a painting I made toward the end of 2023, at a moment when my practice was undergoing a significant shift. Although the figure does not resemble me physically, I consider it a self-portrait. The image emerged quite suddenly, and I began sketching it immediately, knowing I wanted it to become the largest painting I had made up to that point. It carries a deeply personal narrative for me, not as a literal depiction, but as a condensed reflection of an internal state. Because of that, I feel especially protective of it.

They would be David Altmejd and Marlene Dumas!! I imagine a large-scale installation combining portrait paintings and drawings with a tunnel-like sculptural environment, featuring stairs, mirrors, fragmented figures, hair, and heads.

One of the most important things I’ve learned about myself is that fear is often a signal to loosen control rather than tighten it. Over time, I’ve realized I need to work more freely, breaking my own routines and allowing new elements to enter the work each time. I constantly remind myself not to protect what I already know how to do, but to risk changing it. That openness has become essential to how I continue working.