All that is carried

Abstract

This paper supports my Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, All That Is Carried, presented at The Fifth Parallel Gallery from November 25 to December 7, 2024. All That Is Carried concerns ideas of home, longing, displacement, and memory. My intention is to convey feelings of disorientation and in-betweenness caused by leaving my family home, and home country. This exhibition addresses the complexity of my transitional state between homes. The installation consists of unstretched, shaped, and cut fabrics painted with images of interiors of my former home in Iran. The paintings draw from photographs I took of my former home. A wooden suitcase filled with folded paintings accompanies the hung paintings. Migration is the most significant change of my life. Visiting my family home in Iran, while living in Rome, was like stepping back in time, but into a timeline that I no longer belonged to. I was a visitor in my parent’s house. Everything that remained behind: my family, friends, most significantly, my feelings of home, was altered. What once felt whole and meaningful was now distant. Yet, the existence of my parent’s house kept these feelings of home prevalent in my life. Despite living in Rome, I carried the unsettling feeling of being tied to a home while also separate from it. This state of suspension had me question what home and belonging mean, especially now that my parents, too, have left that house. This double loss felt like the centre of my world had disappeared, leaving me adrift. All That Is Carried remembers and reimagines that house through painting—transforming it into a tangible memory. The paintings are on a lightweight fabric, like clothes, something I can pack and carry with me. Through the process of making, I am now at a better understanding of what my former home provided for me. I can preserve and carry the significance of home with me.