Saba Alizadeh-Ahi

Story of Rostam and Sohrab

Grid image of all 9 works together. For seeing each image individually, click on the project's website icon.

“When I moved here from Iran, I realized that the stories that I had grew up with were now alien to my new community. Western mythologies and stories were always familiar to me growing up, and the fact that I could not say the same about non-western stories having the same great influence here, became increasingly frustrating for me. In an attempt in introducing these stories to my new community, I decided to base my project around a famous Persian book of poems: The Shahnamah. This nine pieced digital painting project, revolves around one of the many stories from Persian poet Ferdowsi’s The Shahnameh, the story of “Rostam and Sohrab”. It recounts the tragic tale of a father and son as they greet each other for the first time on opposite sides of a war. In the final act of their battle, Rostam delivers a fatal blow to Sohrab, unwittingly killing his son.Following in the concept of both traditional and modern styles of Persian miniature paintings, I started to adapt the story in a way that would be both reminiscent of those paintings. Traditional Persian miniatures tend to be more simplistic in figures, but greater in detail with their ornamentations. In setting up the main paintings, I turned the idea of ornamentations as transitional pieces. The idea and the presence of ornamentations, are quite important in Persian miniatures, therefore it was imperative that they were a part of my painting series as well. ”