Nine black and white fabric scrolls form an installation called Deprivation, primarily self-portraits. Deprivation has been printed in two sizes: the larger measures 40 x 60 inches, while the smaller ones are 22 x 60 inches. Each scroll is an inkjet print of a photograph on cotton fabric. I appear wearing a white dress in three of the photographs; in other scrolls, my hands or my face are partially or entirely visible while I am naked. In this body of work, I incorporated self-portraits to better illustrate how pain and trauma helped me through. The audience will find Persian calligraphy on each of these scrolls. The scrolls have been written in acrylic ink using a brush. Six years ago, I have noted when I was harassed and abused by my partner in Iran. Each text is an imaginary dialogue between my partner and me. While I was deprived during that violence, I was madly in love with my partner. I couldn’t leave him, nor could I breathe without him. Story of each text is different; while they are some hints and worlds connecting them, I am mentioning his betrayal and my fear of losing him in all of them.
The scrolls hang from cables which are connecting two parallel walls. Four cables hold two scrolls, and the very front cable holds one giant fabric depicting me hugging the absence of my partner. At first sight, you cannot see all photographs on the scrolls. You must walk through them and look at the photographs and the texts.
The nine scrolls divide the gallery into two, and the front half will be the pieces that illustrate the public look of my life. Three videos (a three-channel video) will be displayed in the other half of the gallery.
As the audience walks through the scrolls and turns them over, they will find me unveiling and getting naked in the photographs. That means the very first images contain me with a white dress, and as you walk through the scrolls, you will find me naked. And after that, when the audience passes the scrolls, they will find a video in which two naked bodies almost lay next two each other, which is the very private part of my life, making love with my partner. In some of the self-portraits I have posed as a pregnant woman to question the sexual violence happening to pregnant women in Iran, as a study shows that from 1600 pregnant women who were surveyed, 34.5%, 51.7%, and 13.8% reported physical, psychological, and sexual violence respectively. (Pournaghash-Tehrani 2011a) I have influenced by Shirin Neshat’s Women of Allah to wrote Persian letters on my scripts. However, the difference is she has written famous poems on her photographs, or rather, she has written them on her body like tattoos, while what I have written on my photographs and scrips are conversations and stories from when I lived under violence.
