I work both inside and outside the studio, moving between the immediacy of painting in public and the focused environment of printmaking. I keep a portable archive of urban and rural life, shaped by frequent movement between city and countryside. Through quick, on-site paintings and witty miniatures on metro cards and other circulating objects, I track flows, fences, detours, and the minor dramas of mobility. Motifs such as apples, farm fields, storefronts, and urban statues appear as points where everyday observation intersects with larger systems of land, labor, and planning.
As an immigrant arriving in Iran’s capital, I used representation to understand the underlying relations of a hectic urban center. I set up my easel, impersonating a masterful painter, to explore my position as an artist in the urban fabric of Tehran. My urban paintings reflect on land and capital as shared resources, on monuments circulated and counted, where the logic of urban planning meets the painter’s impulse to wander.
Inside the studio, these encounters take form through printmaking. The prints function as fragments of the city, moving between historical reference and contemporary life. Streets, monuments, fences, underground gatherings, and intimate gestures register social, political, and economic tensions, revealing how people inhabit and negotiate their surroundings.
