I am interested in the ways in which we receive and perceive information, especially the lenses through which we look at “others” exploring the gray area and the shifting borders between “us” and “other.” 

In Photo Captions, I examine the ways the photograph captions can shape the viewer’s experience and suggest specific interpretations. This series is based on photographs of Iranian women of early 20th century. The overlapping of seemingly similar photographs from the same photo album with contradictory captions emphasizes the arbitrariness of the text that purports to identify these subjects, and the ambiguity that underlies its attempt to classify and create “types.” 

Point of view of the Drone is based on video stills from footage by an American drone in Afghanistan. The blurry and ambiguous fragments reflect the distortion of our assumed realities and the transformation of the video as a moving image to the still drawings suggests the fragmentations of the experience as well as our subjective lenses.

The installation of paintings, Observer Effect and Protest, Orumieh, are based on video stills from found video of the 2009-2010 upheavals in Iran captured by protestors. These paintings examine the layers of mediation through which we experience what happens “elsewhere.” The instantaneous moments of turmoil have been frozen while they act as a permanent pause and replay. The paintings reflect a sense of connection and presence as well as detachment and inaccessibility and connote to the active but hidden modes of observation, emphasizing obstruction or erasure.