CONFERENCE

2022
Made while an artist in Residence at James Madison University








Heating and Cooling

2022
Performance at Vis Arts Gallery, Rockville, MD




The way you say I miss you

2018Performance at Siren Arts in Asbury Park, New Jersey. 

Dynamic and opposing movements, set on the beach with the sound of the ocean's waves as the score. How does one body long for another? How do you miss something you've never had? How does the body experience the tension of distance? Using landscape, color, sound and dance, the performance moves along with an absent score of bilingual poetry, creating an abstract sculptural duet. The performance embodies illegible moments in a time of tension and uncertainty - capturing longing for a distant home, desire for physical connection, and the mythologies of a culture just beyond reach.




A snake in the day and a fish by night

2021
This piece is centered around two sections of Rumi poems, and framed with a numeric system 1-10 (specifically using Farsi numbers). The sections of poem are:

“Your ‘self’ is a snake in the day and a fish at night”
“We are poor ants, collecting love”

This video compiles the performances for the camera: movements using the rhythm of counting in sets of 10 in combination with the poems, and my hands sculpting 30 phallic clay pieces. By combining these two very different gestures, and working within the structure of numbers and text, I see room for intimacy and humor around performing these actions for no audience. The works together show accumulation and physical acts of making as a means to no destination, circuitous and reflective.







Carpet Crop

2020Performance for the camera, video, IKEA Persian carpet, cinder block
11:00 min

In this performance the camera is engaged with as a physically narrow lens, like that of a computer or phone for TikTok, that I as the performer am trying to pose for, and doing so awkwardly but persistently. What if this performance was done for the poet Rumi? The cinder block alludes to the building of this identity in the video, and the carpet alludes to the failure in the performance of that identity.