Another Birth explores the floral patterns of Persian carpets, a subject that can sound very exotic for non-Iranians. Working with these patterns is at once both comfortable and difficult, having to understand how an audience receives these visuals which are familiar to me, but exotic to my audience. Personally, the visual patterns are just a means to an end, a tool I use to approach my central subject.

So much of my work is based on the deconstruction of familiar tropes and patterns. Much like I have unraveled the canvas itself in previous works, in this series I deconstruct and isolate the intricate patterns of Persian carpets. I deconstruct beautiful things, eviscerating them and making them ugly on their own. In Another Birth, I picked one of the little flowers which are used as a pattern in these classic carpets. The dominant color is the crimson red used in such carpets, which here represents blood. The paintings connect with the audience by using reflective paint or pieces of broken mirrors. I also used maps and compasses to refer the sense of place and geography that surround my own feelings of displacement.