“That’s what makes life very dynamic.”
It’s interesting, because when we think about time, our conception, at least in the West, is affixed to one standardized method — which denotes the year 2023. Whereas in Iran, it is the year 1401 in the Solar Hijra calendar, 2566 BE in the Thai calendar and there are also cyclical conceptions of time in other cultures.
Yeah and it’s really about having an orientation. Stonehenge and the Mayan temples, for example, were all built specifically for certain times. They were all activated by a certain setting sun, on a certain day, on a certain year.
How about the references to the sunken ship?
A lot of what I’ve been painting has this fire motif and my first presentation at Anat Ebgi was at Frieze in 2020. In that show, there was a slight flood and at the booth wall, we painted blue and it had all these cutouts, which made it look like water was rising and everything above it was burned. So I actually burned furniture and that’s what they used for the gallery table. I was thinking, ‘how do we bring that out even more?’ Just an interior scene could be fun, where the water is actually halfway. I want to be able to push the paintings and look for new uncharted territories for the work that we can go into, while still honoring the things that we’ve been incorporating beforehand.
This year has been a big reflection year. We did a lot of cleaning and organizing. Karen has Copeland now who is our extra team member, which is really great. So with all that and the gallery, this is the ecosystem that we’re building.
It’s a really great think lab. You present a lot of dualities as well within your work, such as life and death.
Similar to time, I talk about the idea of cycles, seasons, miracles and transformative moments. I’m thinking about generational turnover, as well. My daughter’s two, my grandmother’s 99. That’s very much these kinds of familial seasons that are changing. I also like the harmonies found in contrasting elements, such as light and darkness, and how people can use them as metaphors for their own life. ‘We can get our dream job, but then one of our friends gets sick and goes to the hospital.’ We’re always faced with these triumphs and tragedies. That’s what makes life very dynamic in the way that it is — it can be extremely nourishing and beautiful, but also destructive and harmful too. So navigating that is interesting to me.
