Zendegi

Lar, the city where I live, is a full depiction of a world full of despair and emptiness: waterless, grassless, cruel, and hopeless. 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 rotten bones of dead animals that had emerged from the soil like definite signs of "non-existence." At first, this naked encounter stirred anxiety in me. The bones, bleached white under the hot sun of Lar, were a message to me about my own inevitable fate: annihilation.

In every encounter, my being was filled with horror and my heart rate would rise.

I didn't even like to look at the bones. Eventually, I took refuge in fear out of fear.

Little by little, I started collecting the bones I saw.

I would take the bones home, and while I was both afraid and simultaneously curious and eager, I would wash and clean them in a ritualistic way.

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 carefully laid them all out on the old wooden table. I watched them for long minutes, then I picked up a rapidograph pen and a white piece of cardboard and started drawing the largest skull I had found from the depths of the earth. Each hatch mark on the surface of the cardboard calmed my heart more and filled my being with peace.

From then on, bones are no longer symbols of death and non-existence to me, but symbols of creation. Symbols of the birth of a new work of art on the white heart of paper🙂