An ongoing series of intricate and painterly 'Tazhib' compositions applied onto the surface of various cardboard boxes commonly used for packing consumable goods, all 'MADE in Iran!!'

As an engagement with the urban landscape of Shiraz, Esfahan and Tehran, and as a performative act, over the last three years, I have been collecting numerous pieces of discarded packaging boxes of different shapes and sizes to form and compose a visual and textual archive. This is my testimony to the legacy and existence of contemporary and modern mass-production lines, and the advancing formation of rapid and aggressive consumption patterns across Iran. A comment and reaction to Iran's historical position as a manufacturing plant, with much industry, situated firmly within the region!

I am linking this body of work, and situating it in an existing set of contexts and narratives which encapsulate my ongoing interest in Modernity and mutating byproducts of Modernization in both global and regional contexts!

This body of work encompasses dissection and fetishisation of skin of a vast variety of goods all 'Made in Iran', in manufacturing cities such as Tabriz, Efahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Tehran and many regional factories dispersed and located across the land. By collecting and appropriating the modern cubic structure of these boxes and their worn out, torn down and compromised skin like surfaces, I intend to raise their significance and cultural value. By means of turning them into critical and self-referntial works of art.

Here the application of Tazhib , which is traditionally applied around the historically important and highly valued religious and devotional texts, is "mis-appropriated" and is adopted as a decorative and celebratory device to lend a pseudo-metaphisical statues to each found piece. Relocating each piece of found cardboard to the realm of a praised object, situated within the sphere of "high" culture. Application of Tazhib lends each piece a certain degree of individuality, aura and subjectivity achieved through laboured painterly marks.

Meanwhile the sculptural physicality and constructed shape and textual details of each box alludes to the notion of modern aesthetic values of Russian Constructivists and Supramatists. The variation of fonts and graphics sensibilities visible on their surfaces stem from early to mid 20th century modern advertising codes which were influenced by Russian avant-guards and were applied universally. Yet the usage of fonts in both Farsi and English lend and create a unique set of variations of incongruous usage of signs, languages and aesthetics which in turn reflect the dynamics of a society and her cultures in a constant state of flux and becoming. I am deeply interested and fascinated by these sets of slippages and erruptions manifested in the everyday and its never-ending list of hybrid, seductive and mutating products, where the spirit of the Modern, the Post-Modern, the traditional ad the Alter-Modern are rolled into one!