The Time Between Us

This work continues my exploration of the memory of a friend who was arrested and imprisoned during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising in Iran.

I returned to his portrait through painting, reproduction, cutting, and reassembling. The repeated image became a way of thinking about the time when he was absent and inaccessible to me.

During that period, I could only imagine what he might have been experiencing. My longing, fear, and unanswered thoughts became part of the image.

The fragments are not meant to reconstruct a specific moment. They hold the distance between us—the time we lost, the things left unsaid, and the image of someone I could only reach through memory.