Digital Installation- still image
(2022-2024)
In my traditional practice I begin by constructing the ground itself. I glue sheets of paper together, pressing and layering them until they form a single, resilient surface. This act is already an accumulation of time. The board must settle before it can hold an image.I then sketch and slowly build the composition layer by layer. Miniature painting is an act of endurance. A single image can take months. The surface is developed through repetition, through the discipline of dot after dot, line after line, placed with a single hair brush. The image does not appear all at once. It grows. It is cultivated.
When I moved into digital installation, I did not create images digitally from scratch. Each element was still made by hand. Drawings, painted fragments, marks and textures were produced manually through the same meticulous process that defines my miniature practice. The labour remained physical. The time remained real.
Photoshop became not a tool of invention, but a space of composition. In the digital realm I am able to layer these hand made fragments, rearrange them, test relationships, build and rebuild compositions without losing the integrity of the original mark. What once happened only on a fixed board now unfolds across multiple digital layers. The ancient logic of layering transfers into a contemporary structure.
To arrive at one final image, I often produce dozens of drawings and painted elements. The mark making itself is slow and deliberate. Each fragment carries hours, sometimes days, of concentrated labour. The digital process does not replace this slowness. It extends it. It allows me to consider composition in a fluid way, to shift scale, to overlay memory upon memory, to create depth through transparency and repetition.
The work emerged from my experience of living between cultures and from a growing understanding that identity is never singular or fixed. We often speak of origins as though they are pure and stable, yet every culture, language and individual is shaped by centuries of migration, exchange and encounter. Identity is not something we inherit intact; it is continually composed through memory, history, place and lived experience.
At the centre of the work is a self-portrait accompanied by the Simurgh, the mythical bird of Persian literature. Formed from many different birds and animals, the Simurgh embodies wisdom, compassion and resilience. Its composite nature becomes a metaphor for hybridity, suggesting that strength lies not in purity but in the gathering together of differences. Rather than illustrating a myth, I use the Simurgh as a symbolic companion, carrying the figure through a psychological landscape where memory, myth and lived experience converge.
The surrounding space is emotional rather than geographical. Floating within the darkness are fragments of language drawn from familiar encounters—questions many migrants know only too well: Where are you from? Why don't you go back? As they dissolve into repeated marks and abstract forms, language shifts from communication to atmosphere. These traces speak of the subtle weight of everyday othering and the ways in which words can linger long after they have been spoken.
this work reflects on wider questions of belonging and identity. It asks whether any culture can truly be considered pure, or whether we are all the product of countless exchanges across time. Migration is not an exception to history but one of its defining forces. We are all composites—formed through inherited memories, borrowed languages, shared histories and continuous transformation.
(2022-2024)
In my traditional practice I begin by constructing the ground itself. I glue sheets of paper together, pressing and layering them until they form a single, resilient surface. This act is already an accumulation of time. The board must settle before it can hold an image.I then sketch and slowly build the composition layer by layer. Miniature painting is an act of endurance. A single image can take months. The surface is developed through repetition, through the discipline of dot after dot, line after line, placed with a single hair brush. The image does not appear all at once. It grows. It is cultivated.
When I moved into digital installation, I did not create images digitally from scratch. Each element was still made by hand. Drawings, painted fragments, marks and textures were produced manually through the same meticulous process that defines my miniature practice. The labour remained physical. The time remained real.
Photoshop became not a tool of invention, but a space of composition. In the digital realm I am able to layer these hand made fragments, rearrange them, test relationships, build and rebuild compositions without losing the integrity of the original mark. What once happened only on a fixed board now unfolds across multiple digital layers. The ancient logic of layering transfers into a contemporary structure.
To arrive at one final image, I often produce dozens of drawings and painted elements. The mark making itself is slow and deliberate. Each fragment carries hours, sometimes days, of concentrated labour. The digital process does not replace this slowness. It extends it. It allows me to consider composition in a fluid way, to shift scale, to overlay memory upon memory, to create depth through transparency and repetition.
The work emerged from my experience of living between cultures and from a growing understanding that identity is never singular or fixed. We often speak of origins as though they are pure and stable, yet every culture, language and individual is shaped by centuries of migration, exchange and encounter. Identity is not something we inherit intact; it is continually composed through memory, history, place and lived experience.
At the centre of the work is a self-portrait accompanied by the Simurgh, the mythical bird of Persian literature. Formed from many different birds and animals, the Simurgh embodies wisdom, compassion and resilience. Its composite nature becomes a metaphor for hybridity, suggesting that strength lies not in purity but in the gathering together of differences. Rather than illustrating a myth, I use the Simurgh as a symbolic companion, carrying the figure through a psychological landscape where memory, myth and lived experience converge.
The surrounding space is emotional rather than geographical. Floating within the darkness are fragments of language drawn from familiar encounters—questions many migrants know only too well: Where are you from? Why don't you go back? As they dissolve into repeated marks and abstract forms, language shifts from communication to atmosphere. These traces speak of the subtle weight of everyday othering and the ways in which words can linger long after they have been spoken.
this work reflects on wider questions of belonging and identity. It asks whether any culture can truly be considered pure, or whether we are all the product of countless exchanges across time. Migration is not an exception to history but one of its defining forces. We are all composites—formed through inherited memories, borrowed languages, shared histories and continuous transformation.