Raha Alipourfard

Mohr-e-Mehr (The Seal of Melancholy)

I work in multiple disciplines such as drawing and painting, installation, digital art, and making short films. My practice questions how people are interconnected through their identity in different parts of the world despite their distance and their differences. In Mohr-e-Mehr, I critique Iranian patterns and my cultural identity through mixed media paintings on mirrors and their semiotics inspired by Persian rugs, Farsi calligraphy, and tiles motifs from mosques. Appropriated Farsi Poems collide with the reflective surface and agitate divisive pain and distortion of my lived experience witnessing the Middle East lands.Being diagnosed with breast cancer in October, when I was doing the research for this project, made me feel the distortion happening within me more profoundly. I felt the pain in my body being stimulated not only by experiencing people's affliction but also felt its divisiveness during the long period of my acceptance and curing process. The Research Was Done in the Following Areas: - Mirror in art history: From beginning to contemporary era, in western, and in Iranian art both. - The Iranian visual art, and artists in exile, whose works feature social, and political elements - The Persian motifs and patterns in traditional Persian rugs, and religious architecture both - The visual artists, use patterning in their works - Depression, and its effects on the body pose, and body language to make the figure drawings - Mysticism and self-knowledge, and its effects on thoughts and feelings. - Farsi poems with mystical themes - How to incorporate calligraphy in my design - Material research - The size of the work, and the mirrors to be used - Installation research ( How to install mirrors as the support.) - How to make an infinity reflectionSupport and Framing Construction: - Material: 36 pieces of Ikea mirror Lots 30cm*30cm, 9 pieces of hardboards, 60cm*60cm, 7 pieces of lumbers 1”*3”*71”(180cm) - Process: Making a 180cm* 180cm frame with the lumbers, Mounted the frame on the wall, Sticking each 4 of the mirrors on each one of the hardboards, Mounted the hardboards on the frame using double-sided tapes

“ I researched internally from my body and soul as an Iranian female artist. I ask myself, how am I being affected by what I am experiencing as an artist far from my homeland? What distortion is happening within my psychological narratives? How could my beliefs, my sensitivities, and my background empower me to overcome the distortions and internal conflicts happening within me?I feel duality in my life,I feel a dichotomy in my soul,I feel chronic pain spreading into my body,which incrementally displaces me as an independent person.It interconnects me to the land which I carry in my heart.It interconnects me to the smell, and tactility of soil,where my memories are rooted in.This poem's interconnection defines my life, rearticulates my days and nights, and motivates my art. My research is strongly connected with what is happening in the land connected to my identity, the Middle East. I convey my lived experience, critically observing different governments’ oppressive states reflecting my unsettledness in that land.Mirrors play a symbolic narrative in my work that conveys the repetitive divisive of pain and distortion within me with infinity reflections. Also, it helps audiences from other parts of the world feel themselves in the space and make a connection to it because social-political issues are not limited to a specific geographical area or to a specific time in history. Patterns echo my cultural narratives that question and situate my identity in Canada. Along with floral patterns inspired by Persian rugs, mirrors, and bluish shades of colors are inspired by Islamic classic Persian architecture. The calligraphy of Farsi poems conveys my mystical point of view, coming from the mystical Sufism beliefs that empower me in crucial situations in life.”