My work reflects my unique situation as an artist both estranged and operating outside of my native land. The unsettling differences between my experiences living in Iran and abroad, and my persistent attempt to reconcile these paradoxes, serve as a foundation for all of my work. In making my work I strive to reveal my voice, my body, and my transgressions against the patriarchal limitations placed upon women in Iranian society. In doing so I have become a narrator, challenging the oral, spatial, and corporeal bondage that inhibits women in Iran. My personal experience in Iran laid the groundwork for my new series of paintings and I believe this level of subjectivity lends the images a more visceral strength. The patterns and also the apparel in these series are significant to my personal experience and to the cultural, social and religious histories of Iran. My presentation consequently crosses a fourth limitation placed upon women in Iran’s patriarchal society: the visual. By constructing my work outside of the environment that is the subject of its critique, it becomes representative not only of the marginalization of women in Iran, but also of a minority culture within my adopted environment, the United States.