The piece will be a ninety-minute experimental animation. It is a visceral work made of geometric shapes, abstracted bodies, and patterns referencing mathematics in Islam, created from digital paintings that intend to help people heal from the PTSD of Covid-19 experienced collectively --through color, form, and line. It is influenced by Western masters such as Dan Flavin and Rothko, abstract and Minimalistic. The work takes on a second layer as I tell the refugee story of my mother and myself, immigrants of the Iran/Iraq War, incorporating found footage and figurative paintings, as well as paintings with word art that are performed as part of the narrative. The global warming catastrophe is alluded to with images of falling icebergs and amateur cutout animations of 3D icebergs in stark hallways for example. These images are also ways of subliminally exploring my relationship to my mother and our war experience.

I use Cageian forms of the pause or silence in long sequences of scored, often non-representational animations. The sound is to be felt and not heard. I work with Persian traditional/ experimental musician Alan Kushan. He has been developing the music as an indirect response to the current events in Iran. I am sewing together vignettes of the animations meant to house the unfolding refugee story of a Marxist Iranian-American working-class family intent on the end of the military-industrial complex in a time of global warming catastrophe. We find ourselves in a frozen-over Brooklyn where my mother, a closeted painter that never brought her work to the attention of what is referred to as the “Art World”, works at a laundromat. I have taken poetic license: the paintings in the film are revealed to be my own, and I too a refugee and daughter of a refugee.

I want to research Persian miniatures and mythology and their use in contemporary art to open up my story and better understand the figurative works within the animation. I’d also like to study mathematics in Islam. I want to interview my mom about laundry in Iran as a jump off point to research her experience in the underground as a Marxist youth revolutionary. To be clear, my mom does not work with laundry. She was a waitress for 25 years but has knowledge on the topic. There is a slippage in the story and between our identities which allows me to assert myself as a first-generation American. This is a form of glitch which is emphasized given digital art is my medium.  This slippage would make up the narration, dialogue, and framework of the film.

The piece avant-garde and digital, is made with Photoshop, Premier Pro and After Effects. It should be shown on a large screen in a cinema or gallery, or in spaces such as the Arte Museum of NYC. The audience will be fully engaged by the color, sound, and scope of the work, its poetics and story. It is immersive and unexpected, a complete physical as well as psychological experience.