Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing
there is a field. I’ll meet you there
Where the soul lies down in the grass
The world, is too full to talk about
Ideas, language – even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense.
- Rumi

In Tehran, Iran, my friends work together to clean up rubble and replace smashed windows — waiting, sheltering, and hoping that the tyranny of the US and Israel doesn’t reach them — all while continuously enduring their own oppressive regime. Phone calls out of the country to family are cut short; the internet is an on-again, off-again, unreliable love affair with the outside world.

All the while, I get to live in a kind of paradise. I move through the world as I desire. I can make art. Free.

‘There is a Garden’ (a mistranslation from a Farsi-speaking friend who first read to me Rumi’s There is a Field) is a rumination on geopolitical turmoil and my local experience of freedom and peace. There is intergenerational wisdom to be found in Rumi’s writing—a message that carries beyond generations, war, continents, centuries, languages, and religions. Rumi asks us to connect beyond our ideas of right and wrong, to find love, understanding, and our inner gardens.

While in Iran, I came to appreciate the confluence of mathematics and traditional art with biophilic form. There is something innately natural about mathematical patternation, repetition, and natural materials. The iridescence of cedar complements the waves of this piece, introducing an optical illusion that shifts as it is viewed from around the room.

‘There is a Garden’ was created for The Lock Up Galleries yearly COLLECT fundraising exhibition.

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