![]() Rather than diluting audience's perception with some academic thesis, I tend to record my feelings through my work and let the observer decide on their own. Reading some of the commentary by people associated with or observant of my work, it is evident that interpretations are subjective and I take pleasure in seeing that. I've been always fascinated by the ambiguity of Iranian poetry and literature, and its allowance of personal interpretations. I don't want to have a statement even though sometimes people force you to come up with one. Out of curiosity I ended up downloading Blender and I was immediately enchanted, which expanded my capabilities and shifted my perspective of possibilities and logic of execution. This gave me a solid background to start digitally manipulating Iranian/Arabic typography and calligraphy in Turkey.Įarly 2010 while in the US, I decided to send Mahdyar Aghajani a message on Facebook, who I consider to this day to be one of the pioneers of Iranian alternative music, considering how Hichkas and him revolutionized our traditional ideas of what "nationalistic" music should be like. At that time, western styles of graffiti were popping and everyone was experimenting. I had a laptop and started tinkering around Photoshop. I had a really hard time communicating and would spend most of my time at home. Living in Turkey was tough the city of Kayseri where I lived was pretty conservative and predominantly Muslim, lacking any form of "underground" culture, and most disappointingly, very minor knowledge of English among the populace. The scratches on the glass and the gatefold are from prison walls. The foggy out-of-focus backgrounds are a combination of the last five years of police riots-from Hong Kong to Ferguson. I threw a lot of Hollywood at it-broken blood vessels in the cheeks, eyes on the brink of tears, stubble, peach fuzz, freckles. The idea was to make the face come alive and turn it back into a being with presence-take it out of the gallery. Whatever uncanny feeling you might have being in a room with that piece is lost when what you are looking at is its documentation. She knew she wanted to use the sculpture-but on the front of an album it's not a sculpture is it? It's a picture-and as a picture it's really an installation shot. The image is of a sculpture by the artist Josh Kline, who's a mutual friend of ours. I love how the image circulates and becomes iconic, and people listen to the record and look at the picture, and it grows in significance in that experience. We did the last cover together -I thought it was a big pain in the ass and then when you get the actual vinyl in the mail, it's actually pretty awesome to have this physical thing. I've known Fatima I think before she started really making music and we've collaborated on many things. ![]()
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