Messenger

The messenger is a sculptural installation created from skateboard decks, laser cut acrylic sheets and chain. This piece is telling a story of an era in the late 90s through 2009 in Iran when the losses of Iran- Iraq war gradually began to diminish from sight, and people started to connect with other parts of the world, mainly through the internet (although on slow-speed) and satellite.

This era was the first portal for my generation after the Islamic Revolution (1979) for getting information about what interested me in art, sport, music and global politics and how we could use new knowledge for bringing awareness to various issues in our society.

As an art student, we had an eager to learn about everything we could have access and find ways to fight back with the system that was not accepting us as its citizens because of the extreme Islamic beliefs. Later on, a couple of artists friends of mine and I started an art club through social media such as; Yahoo Messenger and in a park called Ghoorbaghe, where we gathered people from all over Tehran, Tabriz and other cities. These gatherings were for exchanging our knowledge, expressing joy through skateboarding and punk music, at the same time finding ways to expand social, political and cultural awareness as artists and activists.

These messages usually spread as street art installations, stickers, and paste-ups for questioning and addressing issues such as poverty, bringing awareness to children's workers and their living situations and expanding various social messages using Persian poetry as a form.

Moreover, as a younger generation, we were always exploring new languages to challenge ordinary people's view and thought who didn’t have time to think about social and political issues of the time and using city as a platform to make social commentary.

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