HOMELAND/وطن

Moving to the United States from Iran as a recent immigrant, specially in the current political malaise, has shaped my experience of understanding ‘difference’ in significant ways. Difference can cause ‘othering’ specially in situations where certain race, gender, or nationality of humans are treated as ‘less than’ by political and social systems that oppress them. As immigrants or/and people of color, these systems are embedded and influential in our daily lives in ways that are often invisible and unnoticed to those who don’t experience the same kind of ‘otherness’ and injustice because of their nationality or color of skin.

Through the use of typography and artificial intelligence, Homeland aims to examine concepts such as belonging, othering/feeling ‘othered’, and the invasion of privacy (one of the most common experiences of an immigrant before and after being granted any sort of visa to enter the U.S.). Homeland uses personal storytelling and poetic speculations to challenge the assumed, invisible, or often unspoken struggles that one can encounter when entering spaces and experience that are not designed or build for us (the immigrants/poc in this case). Through reverse engineering and the shifting of these power dynamics, this work walks the audience through a series of experiences, each designed as a way to communicate a specific emotion or story. How can we fill-in gaps without being obsessed by one apparent idea, which is ‘bridging’ as a connecting point? My goal is to fill in gaps by honoring ‘differences’, perhaps through a method that is more of building a tunnel; while giving the audience the choice for participation or denial as they enter the space.