Zendegi

Lar, the city where I live, is a panoramic tableau of a world full of despair and emptiness: waterless, grassless, ruthless, and discouraging. I used to walk on its yellow, barren soil in that scorching heat. Here, nature is indifferent and base, full of depression and emptiness. In this void, I saw the decayed bones of dead animals which, like definitive signs of "nothingness," had emerged from the heart of the earth. At first, this blatant encounter stirred anxiety within me. The bones, bleached white under the hot sun of Lar, were a message to me about my own inevitable fate: to cease to be.
With every encounter, my being would fill with horror and my heart rate would rise.
I didn't even want to look at the bones. In the end, I took refuge from fear in fear itself.
Slowly, I began to collect the bones I saw.
I would take the bones home, and while simultaneously feeling afraid, curious, and eager, I would wash and clean them in a ritualistic manner.

This process of cleaning the bones washed away my final fears. I was no longer afraid of the bones; instead, I loved them. Now, they had become a part of my life's journey.
I took the bones to the studio and arranged them all carefully on the old wooden table. I would watch them for long minutes, and then I picked up a rapidograph pen and a white cardboard and began to draw the largest skull I had found from the depths of the earth. Every hatch on the surface of the cardboard calmed my heart and filled my being with peace.
From then on, the bones are no longer symbols of death and nothingness to me, but symbols of creation. Symbols of the birth of a new artwork on the white heart of paper🙂