MULTIMEDIA ART / GRAPHIC DESIGN / MOTION GRAPHICS / ART DIRECTION / TYPOGRAPHY / VISUAL IDENTITY / PHOTOGRAPHY / LIGHTING DESIGN
VISIONARY
POSTER
DESIGN
DIRECTION,
EDITING,
PRODUCTION
This series is about forbidden love; The love that started when I was in Iran and lasted for more than five years. The everlasting love I felt for a young man who was my best friend, and due to the atmosphere and the fear of being rejected, I could not express that love for years, so I started writing; I wrote so much that my notebooks ran out; I used to put those feelings on paper that I had never expressed and only those notebooks were my only confidant. And now, five years passed, and I moved to America, and the depth of my feelings has plunged to imprisonment.
So, in my work, all my efforts are in portraying the feelings of that emotion and its impact on my present time; Perhaps it is better to mention that it expresses my current state: Now after I immigrated to the United States, I have all the freedom to express my feelings, but I am not free from the inside, that is why I am still feeling imprisoned about that love, and I am constantly feeling that I am kind of trapped by this old love, so I should say technically I am considered emotionally free in the sense thatI can embrace my sexual orientation with complete freedom, but this freedom is hidden for me in another limitation because I am still passing everyday with this old love; that is why I am now a free man but a prisoner. This is the state that I am trying to show in this collection, while inspired by the feelings I wrote during those five years.
This collection called YOU which is the result of using manual and digital techniques: Some parts of it have been created by screen printing technique and some parts by the fish-eye lens through photography techniques and using a projector for projecting types on my body, and as always using types and fonts as my style, because I believe typography is the most powerful element to depict a feeling and concept.
This piece is a reflection of my private life and the constraints of time. I have designed it to encompass various periods in my life. The background, depicted in red, represents a time when I struggled greatly to express my truth. During this period, I wrote numerous words and poems that were inspired by the darker moments in my life—what I refer to as the "blood-soaked" time of my existence.
Conversely, the black and white portion symbolizes a newer phase in my life, which I refer to as the "numb" period. This phase was marked by facing new challenges while simultaneously attempting to convey my momentary feelings through writing.
In essence, this poster combines these distinct periods by employing typography and different words that represent the various stages of my life.
This poster is part of a series that delves into the theme of forbidden love—a love story that originated during my time in Iran and endured for over five years. It's a tale of enduring affection for a young man who was my closest companion. However, due to the prevailing atmosphere and the fear of potential rejection, I remained unable to confess my love for him for an extended period. Consequently, I turned to writing as an outlet for my emotions, filling countless notebooks with my thoughts and feelings. These notebooks became my sole confidants, preserving emotions I had never vocalized.
Now, after five years have passed and I've relocated to America, the intensity of my emotions remains confined within me. For this particular piece, I chose to project the hidden notes I had penned throughout those years onto my body. This decision serves as a powerful representation of the merging of these concealed emotions with my physical self.
This artwork is also part of the "YOU" collection, which explores the theme of forbidden love. For the first time since my arrival in America, I made the deliberate choice to incorporate Persian calligraphy into this piece. My intention was to convey the authentic essence of the emotions that were originally expressed in Persian during those earlier times. I aimed to present this artwork in its original form, harnessing the exquisite beauty of Persian calligraphy as a means of artistic expression.
This artwork is also part of the "YOU" collection. In the creation of this poster, I employed a fish-eye lens to capture a self-portrait. My rationale for using the fish-eye lens was rooted in my desire to convey a sense of restriction and the oppressive nature of the living conditions I aimed to portray. The various types and words featured in the composition are drawn from writings spanning multiple years. I arranged them in a manner that evokes the sensation of these emotions and thoughts swirling around me within the confines of that oppressive space.
My work expresses the concept using Middle Eastern fabric with different texts to consider the simplest concept. Since I believe words have the most power, I always tried to express only my main meaning by combining images and words or just words. The words chosen are influenced by the complexity of my personal life in Iran, in the Middle East. In my opinion, words alone convey the best meaning to the audience. The colors used in my works are usually red, pink, black, and white. Pink and red are the colors representing inside of me, the colors that express the softness of me. White and black are my outer colors, neutral colors that express my masculinity.
There are so many words in my work, words that embrace each other, and each expresses a profound meaning concerning the fringe issues of a life full of limitations and discrimination in the Middle East. Each word alone may have a simple meaning, but together it expresses the inner self of a human being who is one of the minorities, a chaotic inner self, full of worries but at the same time full of hope. Perhaps every word can be thought of as one of the organs of the body, the organs of the body that always exist together, and even if they have a problem at some point, the other organs will come to the aid of that organ, such as fear or anxiety, hope always reduces the intensity of these feelings.
