Derooz, Emrooz, Farda (Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow) I combine material, modulating stitching, layering, and scale, to reference material culture across the legacy of my family’s migration, going from the past to the present. Derooz (Yesterday), I use materials I imagine were in my family’s home in the past. Delicate lace tablecloths, connote a feeling of nostalgia with underlying pink-hued fabrics reminding me of the color shift in Ektachrome slide film, with the word “derooz” embodied in a gradient of gold sequins fading into the past.
In Emrooz (Today), the fabrics I use speak to ideas of hybridity, loss of the past. Instead of the lace tablecloth from my imagination of Iran, there is a vinyl red and white gingham, an ahistorical simulation of idealized Americanness, referencing the pastoral picnic blanket as appropriated into a mass-produced object. Constructed as a traditional quilt, Emrooz is an invention for me to figure out what it means to be an American as a hybrid subject.