Tavoos / طاووس

“Tavoos is a collection of fragments. A sentimental relic of cultural images, both real and imagined, both in America and in Iran. Nostalgia for a place that I have never seen, yet know and remember deeply. Family photos, film stills, and symbolic imagery, hand transferred using a printing press, layered with Farsi phrases that endure in my memory, sewn together with silk thread. A kind of family album, a gilded remembrance constructed over years of displacement, merging memory and art. 

Concerned with the beauty of ancestry more than historical accuracy, a mythicized version of my heritage begins to take shape. In the space between connection and exile, Sergei Parajanov’s film ‘The Color of Pomegranates’ holds nearly as much significance to me as my own family memories. Photos of my haft-seen blur into a Parajanov backdrop, a silk rug, a white rose. My aunt’s storied beauty, the mysterious arch of her brow. My great grandparents in Hamedan, Molook draped in her wedding jewelry, Saleh somber and refined. In my dreams, they appear just like this, floating and regal. Her eyes hold the longing of generations. 

There is a wall of jasmine flowers outside my childhood bedroom; every summer their scent reminds my mother of Iran. Blood, the moon, a rose, pomegranates, a peacock feather. Bread, books, a window, a crown. Tavoos means ‘peacock’ in Farsi. The symbol of the peacock watches over the book from its beginning to its end, beautiful and strange, an emblem of Iran and of another world entirely.”