Simin Ekrami

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Interview Transcript

Part 01


Part I – Childhood

I was the fourth child of my family

from an unintentional pregnancy.

My mother used to tell me

that she did everything to

get rid of me but nothing worked

it seems funny but she even used

to put a mortar made of stone on her belly

so she might have an abortion

Maybe that was the first time I was introduced to stone

I was a very naughty child

very stubborn and obstinate

In my family you couldn’t escape from doing hard work

and we were always supposed to try and work hard

I never recall seeing my mother

sitting without doing anything

She was a very skilled knitter

and after finishing her daily chores

she would sit and knit

and she was so skilled that she would even put her “Sepid va Siah” magazine

on her laps and read at the same time

My father was originally from Kashan

I remember when we were kids we used to go to Kashan during summer

The last time I went there

I was five years old

One day we heard a commotion from the street

I opened the door and since I was very naughty

I ran into the street to see what was going on

I saw a group of people rushing in my direction

holding on their shoulders a huge portrait of a man that I believe was Mossadegh

it was the year 1953

Suddenly someone grabbed me by my shoulder and pulled me inside the house

This was my last trip to Kashan

Because there was a vast flood in Kashan

and my grandmother who lived

there was badly injured and so she moved to Tehran

They used to have a beautiful house there

and in its cellar they had carpet looms

and everyday some women would come

and weave carpets

My mother used to say that Simin is so naughty that she even climbs a high wall

I was always on top of walls playing with boys

Our house used to be in Picheh Shemran”, near Kamalolmolk vocational school

And I passed my preschool and grade one at

Mrs. Bamdad’s school, Badrolmolook Bamdad

which was such a magnificent school

Badrolmolook Bamdad

in preschool we learned English as well

I was born in 1948

When I finished grade one

we moved to a new house

in Jaddeh Ghadim Shemiran

Shahnaz 4 street

and I started going to school there

When I was 10 or 12 years old I asked my mom

to enroll me in a painting class

There was a beautiful garden in Bahar street

they enrolled me there and

I used to study watercolor painting in an attic there

Years later, before Mr. Jazeh Tabatabayi passed away,

I met him at a party and I told him

that as a kid I used to study painting in a such a place that belonged to someone

called Tabatabayi and whether he related to that person?

and he told me “Dear

you used to come to my classes”

and I didn’t know who he was at that time.

After entering high school

I started attending Kamalolmolk vocational school during summer to study drawing

and my master was Mr. Sheikh

and we used to sketch Bahlul

I studied at Homayoun high school in the field of natural sciences

I wanted to become a surgeon

I passed the entrance exam of the university

and was accepted at the department of dentistry

Luckily I didn’t become a surgeon since I am scared of blood

After obtaining my high school diploma

I wanted to go to the United States

to Baltimore to continue my studies

There

I knew I wanted to

study Art and become a sculptor

The first day, our sculpture professor asked me if,

coming from Iran, I knew Parviz Tanavoli? and I answered no

Well I was 18 years old at that time

and hadn’t yet entered the art world.

He told me that he was Tanavoli’s class mate in Minneapolis

He told me that I didn’t have to concentrate on learning perspective

that my style of drawing was close to Iranian Miniature

and that I should continue the same path

I realized that this professor had

seen something in me and he wanted to encourage it.

During the second year at the same class

that professor told me “Simin

you are an artist

and you will become one

I can see that

In the States, they used to call me Ms. Hard-working

since I was working every day at the studio until 8 or 9 in the night

And we were allowed

to do what we thought

Over there, I could see that each of the professors were focusing

on each and every one of the students

on our capacities and capabilities

One day, my sculpture professor told me that he wanted

to take me to his studio

We became close friends and

I was practically living there, we used to listen to Bob Dylan

and talk about art.

These things didn’t happen much in Iran

I studied in Maryland for three years

but my father became gravely ill and when I came back to Iran to see him

he asked me not go back to the States

transferred my units to Tehran University

Back in the States I had studied three years

but in Iran they accepted me at the second year

My professor was Parviz Tanavoli

and

one of my class mates was Bahram Dabiri

I met him at the university and later we got married

I entered Tehran University in 1971

and I graduated in 1973 because I had two years to finish

The university was a

very pleasant environment.

Mr. Mirfendereski was the Dean

and the atmosphere was very much like in the States

Back in the U.S,

I used to work until 8 or 9 at night

until the cleaning staff would ask me to leave

Here was the same

Tehran University had a very relaxed and open environment

and

which was very pleasant and enjoyable

University doesn’t make anyone creative

it just teaches you techniques

I learned welding and casting there

I learned about composition

But what I would do with it was my own concern

When I was a student, all the boys would go to Mr. Tanavoli’s studio to help him

He was making the first “Heech”

I asked him

if I could also work there

He said “no, you’re a girl”

I insisted but he didn’t accept

I told him I would make coffee for them

So I went there persistently

for a few days and only made coffee

One day Mr. Tanavoli told me to pick the milling machine and start working

So I stayed there and began my work

Years later

he told me that he had a bet with his wife over me

One of them was saying that I wanted to go there to flirt with boys

and the other believed that I really wanted to work

“And you won” he told me, “you had come to work”.

I had one stone carving unit with Ms. Saliani

but mainly my professor was Mr. Tanavoli

Mash Esmail would make clay for us at the studio

he hadn’t become a sculptor yet

but with the help of the students

and Mr. Tanavoli’s supports he became one.

My professors were Mrs. Mohassess

Mr. Hamidi, Mr. Pakbaz

Mr. schlamminger

and Mr. Tanavoli

I learned a lot from Mr. Pakbaz. He taught History of Art

which was a very enjoyable class

and I have learned all my knowledge in that field from him

I had painting courses with Mr. Hamidi and Mrs. Mohasses

I am thinking who was my drawing professor

and I believe we had both painting

and drawing with the two of them

– My question is until what age was your inner child with you?

It still is.

Part 02


Part II: Marriage, Life, and Work

After finishing university

I got married to Bahram

We had a small 3 –room apartment. We had turned one into our studio

one into our bedroom and the other our living room

We used to read poetry, Bahram used to paint

and I would to sculpting with small pieces of wood came ashore by the sea

which were very soft and hollow pieces

This was the beginning of my sculpting career

We lived in that apartment for twelve years

and both our children were born there

We were very lucky in life

and felt very blessed

Among our friends were

Mohammad Ghazi,

Sepanlou

Hannibal Alkhas

Esmail Shahroodi

Sometimes they would come to our house

at 1 -2 in the morning and wake us up

And I

see that now

these things don’t happen anymore in our society

Back then young people could easily have close contact with artists

We could sit with them in cafes and talk

we would go to their houses

and listen to their poetry

Nowadays, young people have become very limited in their social life

I don’t see artists hanging out at a café

socializing with young people

Everyone is living in their own closed cocoon

And in my opinion this is very dangerous

Exchange of knowledge and ideas don’t happen anymore

But back in our days, all these incidents happened

in our daily life and we touched life very closely

Throat surgery of Mohammad Ghazi and his departure to Germany

all these events were in our lives

Or Gholam-hossein Sa’edi was at our place every day

This was when Alkhas

didn’t have a studio either

and worked at our studio for a while

So from the morning, people like Sa’edi, Alkhas and his models

and other friends would gather at our place

we would read poetry

cook, socialize

and in the afternoon others would join us

This was a very magnificent life for me

So after 12 years when my second child was born

we left that place

and it became Bahram’s studio

When I became a mother, well Bahram was painting every day

and when the baby was asleep

I would read poetry

Shamlou, Akhavan, Azad

poets that we liked

and I was constantly reading books

so I didn’t lose my contact with art;

Masoud Sadeddin, Manouchehr Safarzadeh, Iraj Zand

anyone who didn’t have a place would take his easel

and come work with Bahram

Therefore, I was very much influenced by my surroundings

At my father’s house that was located in Jaddeh Ghadim

we got permission from the town hall

to build a duplex in its garden

My mother and one of my sisters were also living in that house

That is also a very sweet memory for me

We were together for 20 years

until my mother’s death

So we sold that house and moved out to this place where you are now.

When my children were born

I quit working

I was really mad that I couldn’t work and had to take care of the children instead

But at some point I turned off that button

until my son started school

because he was a naughty little boy and constantly wanted to play with the tools

so when he started school in 1988

I started working professionally in my studio every day until now

My studio was in my back yard

so I had the chance to prepare my food

go and work in the yard

and when my tools got heated I could go back to my cooking

this sway

I was back and forth between two

workshops of cooking and sculpting all the time

And it’s not very hard

of course it can be annoying at times

you have to interrupt your work

at a sensitive point and go bring your child from school

But all of this became possible

I learned a lot in this life,

I mean the artistic growth happened at this point of my life

during my marriage with Bahram

connections we had with other artists

and the work we were doing day and night

was very important in that sense

very much

And Bahram, as a man, never prevented me from doing my work

My professional life began after that

I wanted something

but I achieved it after my marriage

I don’t know if I could walk the same path had my husband been a bank employee

or a school teacher

Being at the side

of another artist granted me

the opportunity to

easily grow and move forward

Jealousy, yes, I was jealous when

I had children and couldn’t work

because I could see

Bahram could grow and move and I was standing still

But when I started working

I realized that I hadn’t been that stagnant

because I was constantly involved with art

and I knew what I wanted to do

and I immediately started

They say it is difficult for two artists to live together

Bahram and I

never

interfered in each other’s business in the field of art

If I needed advice

he would give me and vice versa

but we never imposed our opinions on one another

The best souvenir of my past

is giving birth to my two children

one of the most glorious incidents of my life which

I cannot compare to anything else

The moment of birth was the strangest thing that happened to me

anytime I remember it

Natural birth is something through which you are experiencing

that pain with your flesh and blood

The pain you take for making a sculpture is mental

but you endure both mental and physical pain to give birth

it’s unrivaled

But becoming a mother was the most significant incident of my life

I loved becoming a mother

Part 03


Working periods

When I was a child we had a radio,
which we still have here,

and in the afternoons when my parents
were taking naps

I would go behind that radio and open it

to see what was going on inside it

and then I would close it again
and I would do the same thing the next day.

Or if we were invited somewhere

or if there was construction going on

I loved to take some cement

and arrange bricks to make a wall.

Maybe the source of this desire to work with my hands

was observing my mother

She was very peculiar

Sometimes I saw her having spread lots of colorful yarn in front of her,

mixing them.

After I started university I realized that she was familiar with complementary and opposite colors

and without any concrete knowledge she would put them together,

she used to knit professionally.

Or my father when my teacher at school

wanted us to draw something,

I asked my father to draw me a flower,

his skillful hand was amazing,

and later I saw him sketching designs of Kashan carpets.

Making something with my hands

was very important for me,

maybe I made lots of handicrafts in my childhood.

In the U.S, our ceramic professor told us that the best tools are our fingers

and using them we can either be creative and make things

or kill someone or steal.

I always remembered this,

that the most beautiful tools are our fingers.

When you work with clay

you don’t need any special tools,

your hands are doing everything for you.

I started working with pieces of wood that the sea brought ashore,

hollow wood that you could easily carve.

Later, when I started working professionally I worked with plaster

and on the side with wood.

It happened sometimes that while working with wood and suddenly I would feel the desire to make models with clay.

I mean the hardship of carving would give me the need to work with clay

and create the form I wanted to make.

Because when you work with stone or wood,

those materials limit you,

you can suddenly confront a load in the stone

or a knot in the wood that obliges you to design your path accordingly.

But when you are making a model with clay or plaster,

you can specifically make what you want.

So it has happened that I was working with wood for a while,

but I suddenly leave it and start working with clay.

I used to carve stone for about 7 to 8 years and when I had enough money I could give the models I like to a bronze founder to do the molding.

I now concentrate mostly on bronze,

that is done in a bronze founding workshop

and it becomes patinée there and I only have to put it on a stand,

but wood or stone during carving stay with me until the end.

During the first period of my work I only worked on reliefs, on plaster, on square or rectangular blocks,

in fact the start of my work happened with reliefs when my son started school.

After that I started working on three-dimensional pieces.

I didn’t divide my works into periods,

that I worked with different materials,

and at times my works were based on specific incidents.

I really liked my stone carving period,

because I was invited to Jamshidieh park when they were developing and extending it

they suggested that I worked on four bedrocks,

of course I had stone carvers because rocks were very big and we had to work on scaffolding.

It happens a lot during work that you wish you had someone to bring you the file for example.

That period was very pleasant for me

because I had someone working on my side to talk and work with.

It was truly pleasant.

The turning point in my work was when I got more familiar with Al-Biruni and Estakhri.

One day they came to me form the Bank of Industry and Mine

and they asked me to make them a portrait of Khwarizmi

to give as an award to mathematicians and scientists.

I told them to bring me a picture of Khwarizmi

so that I could make the portrait

and naturally there was no picture of him

but I was enticed to know who Khwarizmi was.

So, through Mr. Mohammad Zahrayi I went to see Mr. Shahriari,

a mathematics professor.

He explained who Khwarizmi was

and recommended a few books

and I went to the National Library in search of Khwarizmi’s works.

By looking at his formulas it occurred to me

that it would be a great idea to make one of his them as a sculpture instead of his portrait,

because that portrait can be anyone,

Avicenna or Saadi or Hafiz.

At the National Library I suddenly came across Al-Biruni’s map

from the earth and also that of Estakhri and I was astonished.

I took their maps and started working on them.

I made Al-Biruni’s map which is now installed at Goftegu park,

and I made Estakhri’s for phase 9 and 10 of Asaluyeh after 20 years.

In a way I was telling them “Al-Biruni, Estakhri I should make big monuments of your works so that everyone can see them”.

These two works were the turning point in my career

because I always liked to make the works of our scientists as sculpture

and display them in a park instead of their portraits

and I was astonished that one day when I had made the bronze sculpture of Al-Biruni

and one day a friend of mine brought someone to our place who after seeing the sculpture said

“that is Al-Biruni’s map of earth”.

I was so excited to realize that many people would recognize that work.

Or for example Khwarizmi had a formula for dividing inheritance,

which can become a beautiful and minimal statue

and I’m sure if it is built every mathematician would recognize it.

I really enjoyed doing research besides my sculpting work

and it is still very interesting for me.

And I still wish to work on Iranian scientists.

Years ago Bahram was going mountain hiking with some friends,

on their way back they were invited at a friend’s place in Chalus road

and Bahram says how beautiful this place is

and our friend replies that our neighbor who is a mine worker (miner) is selling his place,

so later Bahram buys that house jointly with one of the other hikers.

There we spent the most enjoyable time,

it had a traditional oven for baking bread.

When I looked at the mountains from that place

or whenever I go out of town in general,

each of these mountains looks like a real human being to me,

or maybe I see them that way

and because of the fact that in our city the historic fabric has not been maintained,

I started to build ruined walls,

like walls made of mud and straw that are collapsing

or walls made out of stone.

This was another period of my work.

So maybe the destruction that I’m exhibiting today in my works are the continuation of the same destruction of walls.

I called them loving walls

because all the walls I built were both men and women.

There was not just a single person in them.

They were together.

It means that dreams of the people are being ruined.

Their life is being destroyed.

For a period of time I worked with fiberglass

because it was less expensive than bronze,

but it’s not a material of my preference.

I prefer harder and more solid materials

like wood, stone or bronze.

Wood is truly an alive creature.

When you’re working with walnut wood

you can smell the scent of walnut,

or with cherry wood

and you’re filing it gives you a velvety like outcome,

it is amazing.

Wood is very fascinating to me.

Since I cannot make my work in big pieces from the start,

my sketches are with clay,

then I decide which ones I want to build in large piece

and then I build them again.

My last pieces are called destruction.

It is a personal protest

against the destruction that is happening to historical monuments.

I have made my works on female body,

I have broken them and then I’ve made them in bronze.

I still won’t stop working on them,

I’m still working on “Destruction” collection,

of which I’ve made five or six works.

Part 04


Work’s Feature

My subjects are women, only women and …

– Are you related at all to Mr. Dabiri?!!

Well Dabiri looks at women in a different way.

My women are very tough.

I can’t tolerate insult

and a man telling me that I am lesser and inferior to him.

That man, if women didn’t exist, could not have any existence.

And I cannot understand why they treat women like this,

with this much violence and abuse.

I only think they want to prove themselves.

A Woman doesn’t need to prove herself,

she exists.

Does a man need to be violent to show his existence to me?

That’s why my women are very tough,

they have broad shoulders

and can be match for a man

and tell him “what are you saying?

What is your business with me?”.

Bahram depicts women in a very fragile and soft way

and her women are somehow submerged in space.

My women have their feet firm on the ground

and can handle anything.

I never portrayed a tiny ailing woman in my works.

In my sculptures I tried to emphasize a woman’s power.

That is what I wanted to show.

Most of the times it is out of anger,

a sort of confrontation.

Yes, I make Gordafarid.

Gordafarid fought with Sohrab.

In our society, we are also fighting with you men in a way.

Isn’t it true?

Don’t you bother us enough?

I really can’t believe how one human being would want to humiliate another human being.

I can’t understand at all.

When I was pregnant with my children I made a lot of pregnant sculptures

and I offered a few of them to my doctor who delivered my children.

If there was a man in my works, there was as always a woman by his side,

he’s never not on his own.

But I generally don’t make men,

because I think that a woman’s body has a lot of flexibility,

it has lot of ups and downs

with which you can create new sculptures and volumes.

And also that I like women a lot.

I don’t think at all that an owl is an ominous creature,

maybe because it appears to think that we believe it is ominous.

Owl is a bird that ponders a lot,

the way it observes and turns its head,

its silence,

all come from its distinct personality,

not like those collared doves that constantly take a seed and want to build a nest anywhere they can.

In my opinion owl is an attentive and perceptive creature.

That’s why I like it.

Or maybe it isn’t,

but its behavior is that way.

If I’m working on wood or stone,

I have to look at that piece and see what shape I can carve out of it.

Not considering the times when I come across a knot

or lode that makes me change my design in some ways,

in general I design and work based on the bulk that I have at hand.

If I’m making a model with clay or plaster,

I specifically know what I want to make

and I make it.

For instance, I want to make a woman in a specific position

and I start making the model with clay.

Those pieces that have come out really well,

were those that I played with a lot

and didn’t take them seriously.

Because I’m not solving a mathematics problem,

I’m playing with a piece of wood or stone.

One of these games is that owl you see in that corner,

which was originally made from stone

and there was a cut on it

that I didn’t know what to do with.

One day I said ok I’ll play with you to see what happens

and the outcome was this owl that I think is one of my best works.

The more you give yourself freedom in art,

the better the result will be.

It doesn’t mean that there is no reasoning in it,

like when I come across a knot I have to think,

but I solve it more with my feelings,

because some work has been done on this piece of wood,

now what should I do to prevent damaging it.

Or for example I saw a piece of wood with a knot coming out of it,

so I decided to turn that knot into a woman’s hair,

and I made a portrait of a woman with that knot as its hair.

Years ago, one of my friends used to pose for me for a while for my drawings.

Now I do that mentally without a real object.

Something I can clearly talk about is that when Kaveh Golestan was killed so atrociously,

Mrs. Golestan asked me to make a stamp with Kaveh’s portrait on it to give to young photographers as award.

A few days later she called to ask for something else.

I asked her if I was allowed to think and make something on my own

and she agreed.

I spent two months thinking what I could make in Kaveh’s honor,

because as I mentioned before,

I preferred to depict someone’s work rather than his/her portrait,

so after a couple of months I finally found it

I bought two rolled films and I crushed one of them with my feet,

and a film strip came out of it in the shape of Mobius strip

This strip,

that I came across while doing research on Khwarizmi and other mathematicians has the shape of the eternity symbol.

And when you enter it

you can never come out of it.

So from Kaveh’s heart that had been crushed,

this Mobius strip came out

and by its side was standing a new and intact film strip,

representing the young photographer.

So this is an example of the thinking process for a work.

– So with what kind of material did you make it and in what size?

With bronze and it measures 20 centimeters.

And they gave it to young photographers for a few years.

My main problems were always tools.

When I started working

it was a little while after my academic years,

we used to teach,

Bahram and I were both teachers,

I was an English teacher and Bahram a painting teacher,

and in the school where we used to work,

which was called Pooya on Saltanat-Abad street

and used to belong to my uncle,

hey didn’t pay much attention to art and for example Bahram had refused to pass a few students in painting

and they used to say why?

Painting is not important at all.

And Bahram would say that I even gave them a mathematics problem;

I asked them to draw a 20*20 centimeters square

and to make it checkered with red and green cells.

This is all a mathematics program

and has nothing to do with art.

In any case, we gathered all the works during the one year we taught there,

there were 700 students in both elementary and junior high levels.

At the end of the year in three or four floors of that school

we had an exhibition.

My uncle found out about this incident when one day he asked Dr. Sadighi to come see this exhibition he cried.

My uncle realized that day how art can be important.

So for us with a teacher’s salary it was hard to afford the right tools.

It was important for me to have the tools

and a spacious studio.

I had a very little space to work.

And even when I was working in the backyard of my fathers’ house,

I didn’t have that much space to throw in every junk I had.

Today I have enough space to do welding or to work with plaster all at the same time.

Before I never had such a space,

there was always a limited space in the backyard

and I made my large works in other workshops.

In my own studio I used to make smaller works,

sketches and small pieces of wood.

When you make a sketch of 10-15 centimeters into a 2 meters’ work,

it is completely another world,

and the work takes another personality.

That doesn’t mean that a small work is not good,

small works are interesting and enjoyable in their own way.

But since a statue has a spatial dimension

you prefer to make it large.

I make sculptures for my own joy.

I never had a solo exhibition

and always participated in group exhibitions

and I always preferred to show my works to people in the space where I work and live.

This was my primary incentive,

since you establish a more humane relationship

with people in such a space.

I also showed my works in a few exhibitions outside the country.

A few years ago Canadian ambassador to Iran suggested that I have an exhibition at his residence,

so I had a joint exhibition with Mr. Kamran Adle in that place,

which became a very interesting night.

Part 05


To be content and satisfied with all I have in life,

and to enjoy them,

exactly like the sculpture you are working on

and you have such joy and excitement

and then it all goes away,

and like a baby that you have cut its umbilical cord

and thrown it away,

the joy of life is in small things

and nothing big is supposed to happen to make me happy.

We can see so many things with our two centimeters eyes

and we don’t realize how much we have

and we take them for granted

and don’t see them.

It occurs to me a lot that life is not as serious as we think it is,

not that we shouldn’t be serious in life

and don’t try,

but everything will be blown by the wind,

so don’t take it too seriously.

Life goes by easier and lighter when we smile.

I struggle most when I don’t work,

because I see that nothing comes out of me

so I am obliged not to work and I have to think.

And of course creativity is not achieved by thinking,

but by senses.

So my struggles are mostly in my work.

I really like to touch soil.

That’s why I have a small garden in Kelardasht

and grow herbs and vegetables there.

All I say is that nothing extraordinary is supposed to happen to make us happy,

just that little mint that you pick from the ground

and smell and eat is all the joy of life.

Home is the most important thing for me.

Most secure place in the world,

it is the place where nothing threatens me.

When I wake up in the morning

I start listening to classical or jazz music

and I can’t live without music.

I always say that music has always been the only field of art that has made me cry.

Until this day I have never cried in front of a painting or a sculpture,

but I have wept with music.

Well maybe

it’s because the first thing a baby feels is the rhythm of its mother’s heart beat that it hears.

I think that music is the deepest sort of art we are in contact with.

One of the people who had the most influence on me was Henry Moore

and of course during the 7 – 8 years that I did stone carving I had Persepolis in mind.

Because when I looked at my works after finishing them,

I could see their link to my past.

In historic works of this region,

Sumer, Elam, Persepolis,

we can see that all ancient gods were first female.

Later when societies became patriarch,

gods became male.

And female gods they are magnificent.

For example, a female sculpture was found in Kerman

that looks very similar to a sculpture that was discovered in Germany or Austria

and is called the Venus of Willendorf.

It is unbelievable how similar they are.

Goddesses of fertility.

When I’m sculpting

I only think about my feelings

and I never think about who will like this work

and would want to buy it from me.

I only think about the moment of creation and birth.

I always joke with Bahram and say

do you know how many crazier people would exist if there were no art.

You release yourself in an extraordinary way.

It is really like birth.

After finishing a work,

the calm and serenity that I feel that I’ve finished this work.

And it is strange how attached you feel to the work before finishing it.

And when you finish,

it seems like it goes its own way.

That’s why I think that their fate is like ours;

one of them goes to Canada,

one to the States,

and the other to England,

and they all get separated from me.

This relationship that I have with work,

the need to work and create that pushes me to do these things.

But if I hadn’t become a sculptor,

I would definitely work in another field of art.

The advice I always had in life was to work and work,

and I’m still working,

to be righteous,

not to lie,

to help.

It is while working on something that I get the inspiration for my next work.

Nothing comes from not working.

In life, hope and despair are together.

After having a bad luck,

we always find hope and luck.

Life is all despair and hope, pain and joy, happiness and sorrow.

I think when we find happiness,

it is meant to keep us balanced again

to be able to keep going.

I’ve become a philosopher.

Part 06


About Art

A good sculpture is one that has an inner cohesion

and gets well positioned in its surroundings,

and that way can make its connection with the spectator.

On its own it is the lighting and how it sits in space that gives meaning to the statue.

But

there were many abstract sculptures that I liked very much,

the atmosphere they made was very beautiful.

One of the American artists that I like is David Smith,

a blacksmith who later became a sculptor.

And the mathematical formulas of Khwarizmi reminded me very much of Smith’s works,

who does welding and works with metallic cubes.

I don’t know if he is still alive.

It is not that I only like figurative sculpture,

sometimes I find abstract works very fascinating and strong.

Modern art goes more toward abstraction,

what is also happening in modern architecture.

But I personally find peace and tranquility within older styles in architecture

and I find brick houses very calming.

The way the traditional entrance halls were designed

and how you find yourselves in shade and half shade until you enter the house were all well thought.

We have been fighting for hundred years to reach to this modernity

and we have many of its exterior forms

but in our personal relations

and our view of the world I see that tradition is still highly present.

In fact, the patriarch mood has always been present in this country

and it is hard for us to break free from tradition towards modernity,

how much do we value the viewpoints and thought of our younger generation.

We always think that what we think is right.

Nowadays in Europe,

that has become modern,

you can see a 500 years old building beside a very modern building,

and how beautifully there are blended together.

We think that in order to become modern we have to destroy the past entirely.

But this is not true.

I saw a villager house up in Ramsar’s mountain,

there is village called Javaher-deh

which we travelled to almost 20 years ago,

and I cannot imagine a more modern house.

We entered there,

there was a small room

which was the kitchen

and the villager had rubbed an ochre clay around the opening

and white plaster on walls

and had put a ceramic jug

and there was a piece of felt rug on the floor

and inside he was baking bread.

How much more modern can it get,

how this villager had decorated his house with his intuitive feelings and senses.

The color blue that they paint around their arches.

If we mean modern by cars and roads and freeways

and new buildings that have no identity of their own in my opinion.

Buildings are now a mixture of Greek and European architecture, with granite and bronze.

I think in most places we haven’t fully understood the true meaning of modernity and tradition.

Because in the past people used to live in old houses

but they had very modern mindsets.

I think after the Constitutional Movement we’re still trying to move towards becoming modern.

Our mindset should become modern.

Our appearance has become modern

This is what I think.

Fantasy is perhaps that hidden dream

that one has and wishes to come true.

Anyone has his/her fantasies.

Without fantasy art does not exist.

Look, at the beginning creativity is not important,

you have to work and become familiar with tools

and learn how to handle a chisel,

how to work with adze

and how to turn a screw,

to become familiar with the tools,

and creativity will come along when you work.

Work creates work,

and idleness brings idleness.

I was lucky that my husband was an artist.

And we were both active in the same field.

One day Bahram told me “if you’re not working don’t blame it on me”

and I realized that deep down he’s right.

We should never blame others.