Creating pottery for me is true love. During this journey, I fall in love with clay, who pursues me to follow my dreams and continue my Personal Legend. Pottery convinces me to know the Soul of the World. Enables me to talk to the sun, the desert and the wind. Pottery inspires me to love nature, human beings and inanimate objects. The process of spiritual purification. Doing pottery enhances me to track the true beauty within the universe and the Soul of the World. 

My sculptures emphasize the women in society - how they struggle for their freedom and independence. During the past four decades women in Iran have been fighting for basic rights in marriage, divorce, child custody, education, employment, athletics and politics… even for the right to choose what to wear, the right, to go out , to take trips without men’s permission.

All their sorrows and pain, as well as mine, have given rise to more visible emotions. I believe all ideologies and religions, especially Abrahamic religious, reduce women to marginal citizens and deny their basic rights before they are even born. The prophets and religious leaders present themselves as shepherds and treat people as sheep, so it is no wonder they ask their followers to obey them and their rules without a challenge or criticism. Dissent will create fear among others. The sculpture of Buddha’s body with severed hands and legs next to a sheep represents this idea. 

Sheep remind me of people who lack individuality; they just obey power manifested in government, media, ideology or religion without asking any questions or making any demands or standing up for their rights. Sheep bleat in unison like people repeating slogans over and over without thinking for themselves. Gradually they melt in the propaganda to the point that they become difficult to distinguish from the propaganda. 

Most of my sculptures of women are represented without a head and their body as a cage, representing compliance with the demands of modern society and media to be BEAUTIFUL and become dolls. Religions cut women’s heads (empty their brains) and modern society pushes them to be pretty according to its  standards. 

The opportunities to travel and interact with liberal, influential and strong people have encouraged me to grow and be conscious about progressive ideas. They influenced my feminist work and changed me into a person who does not follow politics, religion or the ideas of any person or authority without critical thinking. And I learned to say the magical word “NO" without any doubt or being judgmental.   

Los Angeles

July 14, 2020