The cities I inhabited growing up in Iran and the everyday urban environments I occupied as an adult provide the primary visual inspiration for my paintings. I address displacement, delving into emotional and historical layers of public space and memory. The way societal changes transform civic spaces interests me. The visual language in my landscape paintings grows intuitively out of my imagination and experience.

My images compress architecture and landscape from my childhood in post-revolutionary Iran with those in the US. Examining historical appropriations for my work enables me to enhance the materiality, significance, and placement of my images in the present day.

I combine details from southern Iran’s dry environment with the luscious flora of my home in Houston, Texas. Water appears as a motif in the form of pools, waterfalls, and lakes. Water is a texture and a symbol, referencing specific yet undocumentable recollections and its shifting availability due to climate change. The eighteenth-century Parisian water carriers’ call did not mention “water,” but “life.” They offered life for sale.