Carrying Distance, 2022.
Exhibition view at Modern Fuel, Kingston, ON.

Carrying Distance is an exhibition of two curtains, a fabric one coloured with natural dyes and a ceramic one composed of thousands of handmade beads. I reimagine curtains as symbolic manifestations of sites where multiple distances converge. By engaging embodied, tactile, and labour-intensive making processes, I reflect on contexts and conditions of displacement and diaspora. The curtains gesture to borders shaped by geographical, cultural, linguistic, temporal, and gendered distances.

This body of work is inspired by the set of a play written by my father, but where the long, white curtain described in the play passively frames the edges of a stage, my colourful and intricate reinterpretations come alive as central figures themselves. In addition to the play, I draws from wide-ranging influences in Persian poetry, feminist writings, archeological monuments, and colonial histories to grapple with distances both personal and global. The artworks in Carrying Distance ruminate on what it means to inherit diasporic families and colonial ruins.

First two images (above) by Chris Miner.