Letters, numbers, and words, spoken or written; to me, they are both manifestations and apparatus of the external power: the patriarchy; a distinctively masculine energy, even more so than the stranded “Messenger” in my explorations.
Ink is indeed thicker than blood: words – spoken or written – dictate the fate of everything. In Harari’s words, we are at that point in history where secondary narratives of money, ideologies, have flourished at the at the expense of the primary one: nature, our tangible fabric of existence. And I often see the current state of the middle east as the most vivid manifestation of this fatal irony. In my visions, I see a forgetful messenger and his naïve-looking little companions stranded on a land of obscure games and indistinct whispers.
I have been following a creative process starting by rearranging figures, limbs, Persian letters, and daily objects found in every household into some form of staging that could resemble anything from a theater scene to still-life, or surreal landscape. I then capture these settings using video and photography and recreate the resultant scene with different degrees of fidelity whereby I add, remove, and improvise forms in an eclectic formal language achieved by a variety of drawing techniques, collage, and mixed media. Each image is built around a core that could come from a vision, a line in a book, or even a dream, and the details gradually emerge in a call-and-response process with materials.
Roya Karimi
Winter 2022
Roya Karimi
Winter 2022
