Interview with my mother filmed in the garden of my childhood home. The film ( view in full below) is projected onto an iridescent and translucent tapestry made from found materials hung to evoke the laundry line in my backyard. Viewers lie down on a Persian rug and watch the film above them, with the option to view the film through handmade kaleidoscopes. These small mirror sculptures offer an intimate window to experience an archive of my family’s history.
My art practice is about the process of getting close to my family’s history and considering the shared faith that connects us across generations. In this piece, I memorialize my grandmother and grieve her by evoking her memory through conversation with my mother.
As an artist I am an archivist for my family. By unearthing and recording stories I resist the erasure of my family’s history overtime. This erasure feels like a natural and inevitable process, like ocean waves washing away drawings in sand — I allow this permanence and ephemerality to converge and coexist in my work. My family’s history across geographies and generations and my faith in an expansive afterlife give me comfort as I grieve my grandmother. In this film, I imagine the relationship that my grandmother, who I called Mamanjoon, would have with my niece if my grandmother were still alive. In this interview, I ask my mom (who my nieces now call Mamanjoon) about how her relationship with my nieces evoke the memory of my grandmother for her.
In Islam, when someone passes away, they are buried directly in the earth wrapped in white cloth so that their body can decompose in the soil overtime. The body is meant to disintegrate quickly with the sole exception of the parts of the body that contacted the earth during prayer. The soles of the feet, palms of the hands, knees, tip of the nose, and forehead are preserved with embalming fluid — still transient, their constant devotional contact with the earth is recompensed.
Mamanjoon and my paternal grandfather both passed away and were buried in Canada, though Iran was the only place they ever truly called home. In death, their body nourishes the soil in another country, on the opposite side of the world from their homeland. Their graves are dug perpendicular to the direction of Mecca. Though they are separated from their home in death, they join the buried bodies of all other Muslims around the world in a collective orientation to the direction of prayer.
I’m grateful that my grandparents are buried in Canada and not Iran because it means my family can visit their graves. However, their death in diaspora deepens my family’s disconnect from Iran, adding a layer of permanence to our immigration.