In recent years, the collective awareness of an obligatory disconnect between human bodies, and within one’s own, has increased. In a contactless world, with our mouths covered, our eyes have become burdened with looking, speaking, and touching. At the same time, with the new—albeit temporary—order of life, which compels us to “stay at home,” we cannot help but redirect our gaze inward and reevaluate our life choices. For Nastaran Safaei, this obligatory introspection came at a time when she was in the midst of a recourse in life, during which she sought distance from her home in Tehran and set out on an exploratory journey.

Like a Big Bang, one that entails both an explosion and an implosion, the path offered a new perspective of life. In this new perspective, much of life seemed suspended, as the path passed through the liminal spaces between difficult, obscure, or strange events. Yet, this sense of suspension was intensified by a constant presence in impermanent locations such as airports, train stations, and roads. In this project, inspired by recent personal life events, the use of different materials, techniques, and mediums, has offered a collaged narrative of the journey. While away from home and studio space, writing and keeping an introspective diary of life on the go, was the facilitator of a better understanding of an evolutionary self-discovery.

The journey has come full circle now, returning to its point of origin, namely the home and studio space, and so, access to usual mediums and techniques have once again made creative production possible. This time too, similar to previous projects, the body is used as the raw material of production. Yet, since the project is rooted in written musings, the created pieces seem more like magnified words from the text: objects held dear as they witnessed the move through the motions of life; hardened cusps, like masks, that fall off, revealing a new self; and objects that are now marked by the mental associations they bring about.