The insects are unpredictable. They take some degree of control out of my hands: when I place a photo in their tank, I do not know what the results will be. This makes me passive and reminds me of myself in the photos: a passive kid in family, school, and society. We were supposed to be, encouraged, raised, taught to be passive. Although I try to control the bugs’ behavior and push them to eat the part I want, I am not always successful.
The bugs are creepy, disturbing and unwanted. Even thinking about them and imagining their legs on my skin gives me goosebumps. I want to transfer this unpleasant feeling to my audiences, not just by telling or showing them the picture of something unpleasant but by using it directly in my work. I am also fascinated by cycles of life and decay which reminds me of time passing. The bugs live in a tank full of soil; each part they compost will turn into soil. I associate this with petrified and expired beliefs and ways of living.
Each photo takes 10 to 20 days in the tank, depending on how starving the bugs are. I constantly check on the photos, move them, soak some parts in beef stock to try to control which parts the bugs eat. I’ve learned that they eat indiscriminately.
The erosion of the image by these creatures mirrors the corrosive impact of oppressive ideologies on the lived experiences of the people in the photos. The insects, acting as agents of decay, metaphorically represent the forces that undermine and consume the identities and agency of individuals within a patriarchal system. By linking the physical deterioration of the photograph to the broader concept of ideological violence, I aim to convey the insidious nature of patriarchal ideologies and their pervasive impact on individual lives.
I try to gain control over these impacts by re-enacting my childhood trauma through the insects’ actions on the photographs as substitutions for our bodies. But I can not control the bugs’ behavior. The insects are unpredictable: when I place a photograph in their tank, I cannot fully control the results. The insects eat the photographs indiscriminately. Each photograph has thousands of nibbles in it. The longer the photographs are in the tank, the larger the holes and the greater their number. Eventually, the photograph becomes fragile thin, and starts to fall apart. The photographs are compromised. The action of the state on our minds and bodies remains.
When I started this project, I thought it was about wanting to express my sadness and anger by destroying these signs that documented my unpleasant life in the Islamic regime. Now—after “Woman, Life, Freedom” —when I open the tank’s lid to check the photographs, I see my home, my nest, my beloved family, and friends, partially devoured. Now, I see each photograph as a sign of home. I see a family who lived together in hardship, and I wish I could protect them.
I want my photos to convey an ambiguous combination of feelings: a mixture of reality and the tension between what I love and hate. I wanted to show these feelings to my non-Iranian audience, who may not understand what it feels like to be controlled in whole life or to lose your nest in the twenty-first century to petrified beliefs from thousand years ago.