Remembrance: Attachment: Portrait of an Absence

This work began with a portrait of a friend who was arrested and imprisoned during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising in Iran.

I first painted his portrait on silk using acrylic and folded fabric, allowing the image to shift, fragment, and bleed through the layers. I then printed and reproduced these painted portraits, cut them apart, and reassembled the fragments into a new image.

Through this process, I tried to hold my own longing and imagination around his absence and the time he spent in detention. The fragmented portrait became a space between what I knew, what I feared, and what I imagined while he was away.

The image is not a record of that time, but a personal memory of absence—rebuilt from fragments.