Decoded​

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Culture is a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, shared, and contested by a group of people. I am interested in the role of cultural heritage in shaping people’s mindsets; people are products of where they came from. In my perspective, culture is metaphorically a piece of highly-layered woven craft. I perceive myself as an individual thread of a whole heavy textiles cultural artifact. The threads are firmly tied; culture metaphorically has the same cohesive structure. In order to see myself within this complex arrangement, I reconstruct the artifact to analyze the construction, and consequently analyze myself within a cultural context. The moment I untie and discover myself, I step back and see myself from outside; it is a unique opportunity to make sense of myself. Does being exposed to other people from other cultures make me conscious of the structure of my own identity? Am I solely a product of a traditional culture, or a combination of modern politics and culture has shaped me? I never know.

Throughout the art-making process, I rely on the decisions that I make and I let them guide me. In my artistic practice, the urge to deconstruct and reconstruct everything leads to metaphorically decode elements and within an interrelated sense of unity, such as a carpet. The Collage technique is tied with my outlook towards life. It bridges the gap between destroying and re-creating, hence it is a decent tool for me to better articulate my concepts.

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These photos show this installation from different angles. 

 

Sogand Tabatabaei

2021