Author: kgholami

Action 6 | Grad Studio I

This action started when I randomly decided to fix a floor lamp that I had in my room for years. A couple of years ago and during our house move, the lamp got slightly broken and cracked in its plastic material. Over time, new cracks were made into it, so I decided to take action and repair it! I had already written the term “making with natural materials” in my action6 declaration form, so I decided to make a replica of the material that was used in the lamp using only natural materials to substitute the current one.

Cornhusk was something I thought about randomly. Initially, I went to the park and gathered some materials I thought could be useful, but none of them seemed soft enough to create a flexible material. So I began thinking about the materials like orange peel and potato peel, materials that would otherwise go to waste. Suddenly I realized that every time we have corn for dinner, we throw away a large amount of corn husk that seems like a suitable material to work with for this project. So one night after dinner, I gathered all the cornhusk that was going to end up in the trash and set it aside.

Part I:

I started by carefully examining the material and analyzing its features. Its transparency seemed like something I was able to use to my advantage in this case since I needed a material that light would pass through. As I examined the pattern, I decided to experiment with some natural/organic colors and dye the pieces to create a more colorful palette for my end material.
I had started rummaging through the stuff we had in the cabinets to find natural dyes when I remembered this old tradition we do in Iran. When celebrating new years, we gather different items that each represent a symbol, and one of those items is colored eggs. Nowadays, everyone uses ready-made paint to color them, but I remember back when we were kids, we mainly used natural materials. One of those was red onion peel, which produced a coppery color. So I decided to start with that. After boiling the husks in a pot with onion peel, I found other natural materials like barberries for red, chard for purple, carrot for orange, and turmeric for yellow.
I boiled a few pieces of husk in different pots of each color and waited for the result.

At the end of the coloring process, I was quite surprised at how well most of the cornhusks had absorbed the color and how vibrant they looked.

I let the pieces dry completely, and then I ironed them and applied pressure. The result was quite interesting. The yellow ones had lost some of their vibrancy, the red ones(barberries) were not as sharp as I had hoped for, and the orange dye(carrot) barely gave off any color, but the chard (purple) and the red onion(copper) were the best outcomes.
Another interesting thing I noticed was how the colors I used on the cornhusks all had different effects on their texture. The copper made the cornhusks stiff and brittle, and the yellow made them darker and thinner. The red one ended up being the most flexible of all four.

My initial thought was to weave something like a fabric out of these pieces using a gradient-like color pallette. I cut the husks into long threads and started weaving using the simplest technique. I immediately realized that I had made a mistake by letting the husks completely dry. The process would have been much easier if I had done this when the pieces still retained some moisture. 
In the end, I created two sets of color patterns through weaving.

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For the first try, I took out the broken surface and replaced it with the new woven “fabric”!

Part II:

After replacing the old cracked material with the new woven one, I was going to put the broken surface in the recyclable trash can when I thought to myself: wait, did I just produce more trash by doing this? Should I have left the cracks live their life in my lamp? In the end, it wasn’t that big of a deal! Was what I did even repair? While thinking, I suddenly remembered a chapter of Daniela Rosener’s book critical fabulations. In one of her projects called the broken probes, Rosner had explored the legacies of repair through the Japanese art of kintsugi, a practice that uses visible gold lacquer to highlight cracks in earthenware. This project was all about embracing beauty in the flawed since our modern perception of aesthetics has been formed based on clean, flawless, and smooth objects. Rosener attempted to challenge this thought by creating an alternative to our mass-produced goods. 

So, I started thinking about embracing the cracks in my old lamp as its history rather than flaws. Replacing this broken material altogether and adding to our already large amounts of trash was erasing the stories behind each crack. I decided to put the old material back and create a material that would just fill the spaces of the brokenness and not the whole thing. 

For my second attempt, I wanted to create another material just to further explore working with natural things. For this part, I went through a process similar to hand-made papermaking using the rest of the cornhusks that were left. I also used some of the leftover colors from my first attempt. I decided to create three different papers, each one representing one cracked piece. The process of making this was so therapeutic that I completely forgot to document it with pictures!

I put these three prices together in the shape of the cracks and replaces the first material with this one.

Reflection:

1.Not just vision:
After reflecting on this action as a whole, I started thinking about the aspects of it that I massively enjoyed. Working with my hands and working with tangible materials that had smells and textures was definitely one of them. I feel like our modern perception of understanding things has been heavily based on vision and nothing else. So we have lost touch with our other senses. This especially matters since we live in the era of technology and dematerialization. How can we bring back our other senses to design?

2. Materializing time:
Time is a tricky and amorphous concept. We don’t see it, but we see its impact: especially on ourselves as we grow up and grow old, and on our environment. Nature is the perfect embodiment of time; The colors, weather, and growth. Even the inner rings of a tree represent time. It doesn’t hide it, but it celebrates it. Objects, however, are not the same. The truth is, we don’t want them to be the same. We want our objects to be in perfect shape. We have good reasons for it though. In a fast-paced world, no one has the time or the energy to deal with a less than perfect product! But maybe just for some objects we can let them age and embrace the unique history behind it. 

3. The art of repair:
In this action, I also explored the art of repair. By looking at objects beyond their functional layer, we can appreciate their values. Objects are living entities that go through different stages of life; They change and sometimes break. Kintsugi celebrates the breakage by seeing it as an event in the life cycle of the object. Instead of throwing things out and creating more waste than we already do, could we look for better means of repair?

4. Going back to the basics:
Starting this action, I hadn’t thought about the old tradition of egg coloring when I was a kid. As I grew up, we all somehow forgot about this. No one bothers to use natural colors anymore, we all use paint. But perhaps we should start reframing our approach? Again, this is a very small example but maybe going back and revisiting some of our old habits is worthwhile. In a world that is focused on consumption and waste, how can we meet our needs within the ecological boundary of the planet? Is going back to some of our old routines a part of the answer?

Action 5 | Grad Studio I

“Our knowledges are always situated” (Donna Haraway, 1988).

Many aspects of our modern world have been operating on a partial perspective for a long time; From art and education to policy-making and healthcare. Design is also not an exception.
Design in the modern world has assumed a universal viewpoint and has implemented that viewpoint in various contexts.
But that fact is all viewpoints are partial. They are all true, but none is the whole truth.

What we see is what we believe

Taking advantage of this partial viewpoint has been the underlying system of many technologies and online platforms because we tend to believe information that aligns with our viewpoints.
In my last video, I raised the question of storytelling with partial knowledge. Museums are a small example of this matter. Some of the more significant and influential examples are news, media, and online platforms. Most media, operate on a partial knowledge system, presenting only the version of the reality they see while ignoring other voices that are affected, mostly from the more vulnerable groups. So how can we believe the marginalized stories if they are not even shown?

Can we create a holistic viewpoint?

Can we create a whole and complete perspective that takes into account all the standpoints? Can we ever build a holistic perspective in media, news, and online platforms? Can we make sure all the voices are heard?

The power of Circle

In this video, I used the shape of a “circle” as the representation of the complete perspective. I chose a circle with very little thought. To me, ‘circle’ is the most complete shape. The circle is unique in the sense that it covers the maximum possible area for a given perimeter. It also represents unity and balance.

In Action 5, Marcia had also explored the features of ‘circle’ by studying examples from her cultural background. She also had drawn from the Bowker & Star, Sorting Things Out (2020), to articulate how circles can become a bubble that you sometimes don’t belong to and are not welcome to. Concluding that sometimes circles can easily get bigger and expand to have you, or not.

Is circle the closest shape to inclusion and a non-hierarchy system? If it is, how can we use its features to create a more inclusive viewpoint? One that is based on engagement, active citizenship, marginalized voices, and heterarchy?
How would these notions of responsible engagements and active citizenship look like in our digital space?
Or Is there another shape that could better represent the holistic viewpoint?

Action 5 | Grad Studio I
Teammate: Zahra Jalali

Where does cultural heritage rightfully belong?

The picture below is a small part of a collection in the Louvre museum called ancient Persia. I took these pictures on a holiday trip I went to Paris with my family a couple of years ago. The artifacts in this section are some of the most coveted pieces of cultural and historical identity in Persian art that date back to 3000 BC.

Starting in 1885, French archaeologists carried out wide-ranging excavations in historical sites of Iran. Most of the artifacts they discovered — tens of thousands — ended up in the Louvre. Some of these artifacts were given away through legal contracts, but many of them were looted.
Being in the presence of these artifacts after only seeing them in history books was a mixture of pride and loss. However, for most Iranians, these artifacts will only ever exist in books since the ability to obtain a visa and travel to western countries is still a privilege for a few.

Encyclopedic museums such as The British Museum and the Louvre are considered the centers of history in the world. These centers, however, house many disputed and sometimes stolen artifacts from all over the world, including Africa, indigenous cultures of Australia and Canada, the Middle East, and Iran. Many of these disputed cultural properties were taken from these countries in the context of imperialism, colonialism, or war. From early on, the field of archaeology was heavily involved in the political attempts of colonialism. This relationship became stronger during the 19th century when archaeology was institutionalized as a field of study, aided by the acquisition of historical artifacts.

There are many arguments for and against the repatriation of cultural heritage. Colonial narratives surrounding the discovery of these artifacts historically have not supported the notion of repatriation. Museums often argue that if objects were to be given back, they would not attract as many visitors, and in many cases, they will not be in a secure and safe environment.
Also, many argue that Encyclopedic museums are presenting these artifacts as a global culture to the entire world and not as local and national culture.

Objects Matter!

For many of these nations, this heritage is beyond the decorative qualities of these objects. Objects carry values: economic, social, cultural, symbolic, and personal. For many Indigenous cultures, these artifacts act as a visual archive that narrates their stories and their history. This means that the repatriation of these objects is connected to the cultural survival of the nations oppressed by colonialism. The notion of rejecting repatriation is the legacy of centuries of colonial power that continues to this day. 
Objects play an integral role in the collective identity of a community, and to own them is to own people’s identity and their narrative.
Moreover, the true value of an object presents itself when it’s displayed in their original context rather than an unfamiliar and irrelevant one.

Who gets to tell stories?

Museums furnished by colonial artifacts usually offer an abstract and incomplete image of colonized nations to the world while considering themselves at the center of this power and knowledge. They tell the stories of these people and their identity from their own partial and biased perspective.

The story behind many of these cultural objects is complicated. There are many questions entangled with a lot of these artifacts. Where do these objects rightfully belong? Who gets to own cultural identity? And who gets to tell these stories and how do they choose to tell them?

Action 4 | Grad Studio I

This is Tehran, an industrial city with a dense texture of high-rise unattractive buildings everywhere you look, a polluted city that knows no material other than concrete, steel, and plastic. It’s rough, crude, and for the most part, very uninviting. 
Tehran wasn’t always like this though. This city used to be spacious, full of air, full of pomegranate gardens and rows and rows of Platanus trees until fake modernization became the agenda. As a result of wrong engineering, careless urban planning, and cutting ties with nature, Tehran, throughout 50 years or less, ended up like this. 

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When I think about nature or anything for that matter natural, the last thing that comes to mind is this city, so when week after week I read that we had to seek ‘things of nature’ for our assignments, I got baffled. Where do I seek nature in this concrete jungle?
There are some parks and green areas here, but I never really felt close to them. Maybe because most of them were built; Planted trees in awkwardly neat order, it never felt natural.
To me, nature has always been an escape rather than a daily interaction. Nature, in the sense of forests, sea, and mountains, has always been a rare occasional visit on vacations and trips (around Iran and the world). So I gave up on seeking and discovering nature in this city. I always thought why bother.

Part I:

At the end of action 3, and after I met with Zach, I decided to redefine the meaning of nature for myself. I wanted to try and seek what to me felt even in the slightest bit natural in this city, not in forests and mountains and exotic landscapes that I usually consider as nature, but rather in my daily routine.
I first started by thinking about the places that I consider nature and how I feel when I visit them. The north of Iran is one of those places for me. Standing in front of the Caspian sea on giant solid rocks, hearing the splashes of waves as they hit the rocks, and feel the wind and the droplets of cold water touch my face, one of the most freeing sensations. I started breaking down these elements on paper. Slowly, I started making a list of the different words that constituted nature for me.

So for the first part of the action, I simply set out to discover and notice nature in my daily life. To see if I could find some of the pieces of this wholesome puzzle anywhere in my day-to-day routine. I deliberately didn’t go far. I stayed around my neighborhood and the places I usually interact with. I started paying more attention to the sounds, the movements, the smells, and the sensations I felt in my body. I took a picture and captured a video/recording of anything that felt like it could be a missing piece in this puzzle.

Seeking nature in everyday things

1. Sounds/Smells: On Monday night, as I was thinking about my action, the first thing that I immediately noticed was the sound of rain echoing on the air conditioner’s vent. This is how I usually realize it’s raining at night, so I immediately went to the window and opened it to let in the smell of dust and rain. I thought to myself, this smells definitely feels like nature.
2. Light/Colors: One of my favorite times of the day is around the evening when the golden light somehow manages to peak through my window and hit the wall above my desk. Feeling that warmth of the sun in my room and on my skin, felt like a piece of nature.

3.Forms/Textures: On Tuesday, as I was baking (a hobby I picked up during quarantine), I noticed how the dough I was working with, had created this almost organic and parametric patterns within it. This form immediately reminded me of similar ones easily found in nature.

4. Movements: Coming back home on Wednesday, there was a light breeze in the air. The clouds were moving and the shadows of the trees were slowly shifting on the brick wall in front of me. Every step of that walk felt like a piece of nature.

5. Sensations: On Thursday morning, as I went out to do some food shopping, I sat next to this water fountain beside a bus stop. I had never done that before; the splashes of water were hitting my face and that cooling sensation could have been ‘nature’ as well.

Reflections

I technically did not make anything in part 1, I just observed and reflected. I started reflecting on our dysfunctional relationship with nature and thought about Tehran and how it used to be the most beautiful city, located in the foothills of Mount Damavand; a city that was chosen as the Capital of Iran centuries ago because of its views and its pleasant weather! So, what happened? Why are we so eager to destroy nature, only to sit back and long to have it back? Why did we put personal comfort ahead of our survival?
This is not the only example. Thinking back to my first chosen lexicon, Decolonial design, I thought about all the indigenous lands that were invaded just to be turned into industrial areas; all the lives and natural resources that were destroyed in the name of modernization.

Throughout the years, we have built an unsustainable relationship with nature, and we have contributed to our planet’s demise. And now, more than ever it seems urgent to realize that we are just a small part of this eco-system and we should rebuild a more sustainable relationship with nature.
So what is our role as designers/humans here? How can we go back to nature and embrace it in our designs/lives?

Part II:

A few weeks earlier, I had seen a video of an exhibition at Schloss Hollenegg in Austria, depicting our dysfunctional relationship with nature. In one part of the exhibition, there was a natural environment with human-made objects within it. Many of those objects were non-biodegradable and disrupted the environment, for example, a toilet in the middle of nature. A monster? (Reference to Action 3).

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While I was pondering on our relationship with nature after my initial action, I realized that if we had any chance of reconciling with nature, going back to it seems to be the only way.
For this part of the action, I decided to create a series of digital photo collages depicting some places in Tehran’s modern/industrial life within a background of Iran’s natural landscapes; to show that humans and their artifacts are not the superior species of this earth and that we should find a way to co-exist with nature.

Action 3 | Grad Studio I
Teammate: Zahra Jalali

Extending and Seeking:
As confusing and broad as this action seemed at first, It actually turned out to be a very thought-provoking one. During the past couple of years, my studio has become my screen and my design process has become a comfort zone, so seeking and exploring beyond this zone was intimidating at first.

This action started when Zahra and I were talking about an article we had read earlier in our Contemporary Dialogues in design class on Decolonial design by Ramon Grosfoguel; A very insightful and informing read! While discussing, we both remembered a vintage map in our studio that was from the early 20th century. Before this, we had never bothered to look closely at this map and always considered it just a pretty object!
We took a closer look at it and were surprised to see how degrading this map was. Not only the map had color coded the colonized states with the same color as their colonizing country (taking away their own identity) but it also had cut Eurasia in half just to put north America in the center of the attention! This seemingly pretty object had all of a sudden turned into a very infuriating and disturbing one.
And This was the spark of this action.

Action 1:
Understanding Colonialism & Coloniality | Exploring through making

Initially, we started our action by trying to gain a better understanding of colonialism, before actually advancing to Decolonial design.
– We started by cutting around the colonized nations from the map and placing them somewhere else to show how these nations were cut from their own home ground and their roots.
– Colonialism did not stop at cutting people from their lands, they wanted to erase their identity and their culture. In an action to do that, we put these cut-out nations in bleach. To our surprise, the bleach did not have much of an effect on the map’s colors, so we had to use more aggressive tools. During this process, it dawned on us that erasing a nation’s identity is not easy, they fight back because people are more resilient than we think!

-Through brutality, Colonialism was able to achieve a faded identity in many places. However, the colors still peaked through; their identity still remained.
– Colonialism presumes a hierarchy of race; a superior identity. That is why in order to achieve their goal of creating a homogeneous world, they wanted to enforce their own presumed superior identity, on other nations. We showed this step, by coloring the nations White!

– Colonialism was planning on achieving a euro-centric universality, where all colonized nations would be heavily dependent on their way of thinking. We depicted this, by sewing all these colonized states to Europe as the center of this world view. We used thick visible threads to illustrates the level of dependency.

Colonialism attacked, robbed and displaced indigenous lands and their people. The world that had been created through it was damaged, unknown and altered!

After the historic era of colonialism ended in mid 20th century, most states gained dependence, however, the impacts of this era still remains to this day. This means that many states and nations do not have full autonomy. We tried to depict this, by first cutting the original threads (showing the eradication of colonial establishments) and then used a lighter thread to make visible the current impacts of global Coloniality.

Action 2:
Understanding Modern/Colonial & Decolonial Design | Exploring through making

In order to start our exploration in this part, we decided to go outside and hunt for more natural inspirations. We went to a park close to where we both live and as we walked through it, picked up interesting objects off the ground: leaves, pine cones, flowers and …

As we were walking through the park, we encountered a tree, with a mark on it. We decided to take that mark (a human-made scar, not naturally made) as a design problem metaphor and explore the ways of designing. The initial basic solution was plastic; a cheap, easy, and universal “fix”! Obviously plastic not only doesn’t solve anything, but it adds to the problem as well. This was a modern/colonial design, without paying attention to the context of the problem.
At another attempt, we had found some flowers on the ground and decided to try with this one as well. The result looked beautiful; drawing more attention to the tree than before. We were torn about this one though; the flower was going to eventually fall off in a couple of days and it was quite a temporary fix, but it was meaningful and aesthetic!
A while later, we discovered a piece of tree bark on the ground, and decided to try that as well. The process for this one was much harder and more intricate, it was not temporary and it looked blended as well. It was not as beautiful as the flower but it was from the same context.
After this making, we asked ourselves: Now that we know more about colonial/modern and universal design, what exactly is the language for Decolonial design?

Action 3:
Understanding The impacts of Colonial Design | Exploring through making

In an attempt to explore without thinking, we started experimenting with the natural materials we had gathered and came up with different combinations.

Around this time, we remembered another article we had read during our dialogue’s class: Sorting things out: classification and its consequences by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star. The book had a discourse around the topic of Monsters and Boundary objects.

We thought about this idea and how one of impacts of Modern/Colonial/Universal design had been the creation of monsters in many communities. An object that for some reason doesn’t sit right at the context of its community and doesn’t blend in.
“A monster occurs when an object refuses to be naturalized” (Haraway 1992).

With this idea in mind, we set out to create monsters! Our initial idea was to mix and match artificial and natural materials in order to create eccentric looking objects.
The result surprised us, because we did not quite found them scary or abnormal. They looked aesthetically interesting. But looking back at them and revising our thoughts, we figured monsters are not suppose to be easily spotted, they could be beautiful objects but in the wrong setting. So what really defines a monster? How can we spot them?

P.S: After my 1:1 meeting with Zach, he pointed out something about these “beautiful monsters”. The fact is that the notion of monsters is not understood completely when we separate them from their context. (Something which we had done). They find meaning when they are set in a surrounding!
Also after the meeting, I went back to the Bowker and Star reading and reread the chapter on monsters. This quote was quite elaborate on this topic:

P.S: After my 1:1 meeting with Zach, he pointed out something about these “beautiful monsters”. The fact is that the notion of monsters is not understood completely when we separate them from their surrounding. (Something which we had done). They find meaning when they are set in a context!
Also after the meeting, I went back to the Bowker and Star reading and reread the chapter on monsters. This quote was quite elaborate on this topic:

“monsters were united not so much by physical deformity or eccentricity as by
their common inability to fit or be fitted into the category of the ordinary—a category that
was particularly liable to cultural and moral construction”. (Ritvo 1997, 133–134)

Action 2 | Grad Studio I
My teammate: Melanie Camman

My Offering | دلمه فلفل
After I heard the title of this action, I was going through all the Persian foods in my head to see which one I should choose as a meaningful offering; Ghorme-sabzi, Mirza-ghasemi or even Tahchin. All the foods I had in my mind were either pretty difficult to make, or took a long time to prepare or had crazy ingredients that I was not sure she could find in Vancouver. So after a lot of overthinking, I came to the realization that Persian cuisine is generally not the easiest to make, and a key ingredient in most of our food is actually patience! With that in mind, I chose one of my favorite meals called Dolma.

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Melanie’s offering | oatmeal
On the other hand, Melanie’s offering to me was her own version of lazy oatmeal. When I first saw the title of her instruction, I actually said Yaaay! Oatmeal is something I already love and it is my absolute go to breakfast during winter time. She said that this is a recipe she has developed over years and it’s her favorite to have on cold rainy winter days in Vancouver.

So there I was, in 30 degree sunny and still summery Tehran, making a warm Canadian breakfast and thinking that with all the travel restrictions in place, this is probably the closest I can get to Canada for a while, so I’d better make the most of it! 🇨🇦
The result was as good as I had expected it be! Warm, filling and delicious!
I tried my best to follow her instructions exactly and even did some yoga (as she had suggested) while I was waiting for the oatmeal to get ready in the oven, which made the whole experience even more pleasant and calming. A great way to start the morning!

Reflection:
After we presented our feedbacks, we decided to have a zoom call and share out thoughts on the whole experience as a way of reflecting on the action.
It was so great to have this talk and get to know her a bit better. One thing that I really loved about the experience was that I had a chosen my offering as a food of nostalgia; because it connects me to my grandma who I haven’t been able to see for a while. During our talk, I found out that the mint that Melanie had used in her Dolma was actually from her grandmother’s garden that she had brought and planted in her own garden. The fact that this food and that one ingredient somehow managed to tie us both to our backgrounds was such a beautiful moment to experience.
Thanks Melanie! 🙂

Action 1 | Grad Studio I
My Teammate: Meghna Mitra

Talking about home ground for me has never been easy. To me, clearly, Tehran has always been my home ground; A city where I grew up in. However, my relationship with this ground was never simple; never how I wanted it to be. In Tehran, I felt happy and yet I felt so scared, I felt accepted and yet I felt like I didn’t belong, I felt loved and yet I felt rejected, and felt like I knew every corner of it and yet felt like I knew so little.

Tehran: An entangled thread of contradicting emotions; that’s how I feel about my home ground.

For this action, I was partnered with Meghna who also had a somewhat complicated relationship with her home ground, although for very different reasons. Our experiences were so different and yet we had many things in common. During our chats and in every step, I learned something new about my connection to this ground.

1. People are the center of this thread
During our first call, we simply set out to get to know each other better; a brief background about where we came from. Meghna had lived in 5 different countries and she didn’t clearly know where to call home. Her room was cozy but she seemed ready to pack her suitcase at any time and fly to Vancouver. To me, it felt like she had lived more than me, going from one place and to another, experiencing all these new environments and cultures, I thought to myself what a cool life to have!
Then I decided to show her my room, with all the belongings I have had for years; even some from my childhood. A lived-in place, that’s what she called it. I talked about my friends and that even a friend I have had since I was five years old, lives down the street from me. She was surprised; never having that kind of stability and longevity of friendships. Here, I thought to myself, oh, that’s kind of cool too! I had never looked at it this way. To have everyone I love, in one place. That’s the most special thing about this crazy city for me.

2. Details matter
During our second chat, we decided to take a tour around our neighborhoods. I started my tour from my local café. A place that I go to every week to either sit alone or hang out with friends. I started to walk home and along the way showed her the things I thought were interesting: buildings, people, cats, my usual bus stop, more cats, a small area where the elderly gather around in the evenings to chat and … . I realized something when talking to her: I have lived here for so long that I stopped discovering it. Even the route I take home every day has become a habit, I don’t even need to keep my head high and look around to know where I am going. I just do! I look past so many details, and these are exactly the small things that tie me to this place. From the old bus I take to work every day to the old book store around the corner.

3. Happy memories feel like home
In our last call, I decided to go through my camera roll and just see what kind of photos in there give me a sense of home right off the bat. I gathered around 20 photos and shared them with her. The photos were so random, some I had to think about why I chose them when I was showing them to her. There was a photo of my grandmother’ pomegranate garden, a photo from an overpass near my old school and even of snow. When I was trying to articulate why I chose a photo of snow, I realized it was all about memories, mostly happy ones! All photos represented a happy memory in my mind, a sense of comfort and belonging; a feeling I rarely feel nowadays in Tehran.

All in all, I decided to map out my feelings. To make visible some of the knots in this entangled thread. Do I wish I could just take a pair of scissors and cut out the knots like oppression, misogyny, and the chaos? For sure! Do I wish when I thought about home, all I could remember were the good memories and not the ugly ones? Absolutely! But I don’t think it works that way…
I grew up with all the elements of this thread, and they all shaped the person I am today, even though I no longer feel like some of its parts are a part of my identity!