Representation of archival material — more precisely, cultural objects — plays an essential role in my projects. These objects are activated within aconstellation of relationships, where they connect with other materials such as text, music, and my own photographic series. By gathering objects producedin specific times and places and situating them within a web of cultural significations, I seek to explore different facets of Iranian society.

 

In my recent project Why Don’t You Dance? (2026), I combine photographs, videos, and archival materials to examine how, depending on the social andpolitical context — especially among members of the Iranian diaspora — can become a means of expressing both individual and collective identity. Drawingprimarily on the autobiography of Mahvash, a renowned dancer of the Iranian cabaret scene of the 1950s, these collages investigate gender and body politicsacross different periods in Iranian society, and their relationship to the construction of particular forms of modernity.

 

In parallel, representations of the urban landscape build a metonymic structure within which these archival elements are placed in dialogue. Thesephotographs also give a face to invisible or imagined spaces where such cultural identities take shape. The project Haut Bas Fragile (2016) questions thepossibility of representing the ordinary city of Tehran—a city that has long resisted photographic capture. Similarly, in Soleil of Persian Square (2021),which focuses on the Iranian diaspora in Southern California and the role of popular music within it, images of the fictional city “Tehrangeles” construct animagined territory shaped by pop music cassettes from the 1980s and 1990s. Produced in the United States and circulated covertly in Iran, these culturalobjects played a significant role in shaping the landscape of popular culture following the Iranian Revolution of 1979.