Animal Farm:

Growing up in Iran and living through; the Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq war and the endless series of unfortunate events that followed, provides the impetus for the main body of my artwork. This piece, Animal Farm, is my interpretation of life as a Middle-Easterner who has been forced to live under the control of a corrupt and oppressive regime. I used colors, motifs and other elements of my culture to moderate and to beautify the bitterness of living in such a situation.

There are some critical events which I tried to illustrate in my artwork. I used lines and organic shapes to create direct connections between certain figures and events. The sharp lines are repesentative of turning points and major historical events. The pig, which has a circle around it, is taken from Orwell’s novel Animal Farm and is representative of the Iranian regime and the power it holds over the people of Iran. The organic forms in the artwork represent the things that happen through no fault of my own, such as the aforementioned circumstances that I was born into or the diseases that have happened to me or my loved ones.

Finally, the color pallette, which is interwoven into the daily lives of the Iranian people is meant to provide hope and warmth to a situation that would otherwise seem hopeless.