<p> I am a woman who was born and raised in Iran, a country that has undergone seismic changes throughout its history, from political to cultural ones, all of which have affected peoples’ ideologies for thousands of years. Like my peers, I have numerous personal concerns to explore in my work. I seek to represent the stark contrast between tradition and modernity in Iranian culture, which has leaked into different aspects of my life. Early on, this was the chief question that led me to develop a photography project while I was about to leave my home country. At that time my journey started based on this first series of work that I made. </p><p> After moving to the United States in 2013, I started to shape my ideas around my personal concerns over the cultural shock I had faced. Moving to a new nation and facing new people who think, act, behave, and talk differently altogether have all made me feel like a stranger. At that time I started to concentrate on issues revolving around the oppression of women throughout history by portraying my ideas through photos of human figures that later transformed into symbolic objects. At that phase, aesthetics of organic forms of Persian handwriting brought meanings into my abstraction. I employed poetry as a representation of the culture in which I belong. I dedicated my concentration to various layers of connotation through which form and content had a chance to shape and convey a cohesive reference. </p><p> Following my first year of graduate school I made a trip back to Iran during the summer of 2014. It dawned on me that the memories of my past versus the days of my present had generated a duality that transformed into an identity issue. This realization made me aware that I was becoming a totally different person while studying abroad. This transition led me to move from representing my inner feelings, and develop my language toward redefining my perception of time and space. This phase of my work was a mélange of photo and text presenting memory, culture, and history, and it formed the work in the thesis exhibition.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:10128864 |
| Date | 30 August 2016 |
| Creators | Emami, Kimia |
| Publisher | Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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