Self-Portrait (2021) | Living Archive

"Self-Portrait 2021: Living Archive" serves as the foundational, catalyst piece that launched an ongoing series exploring memory, nostalgia, and identity through architectural self-portraiture. Inspired by the multi-focal logic and traditional geometry of Persian miniature painting, the composition subverts traditional linear perspective to present the self not as a single image, but as a spatial labyrinth. Unlike later iterations in the series where the human form is removed to study pure absence, this inaugural work explicitly introduces multiple figures of the protagonist caught in moments of transition—navigating stairways, playing music, and floating along a rushing river. Surrounded by symbolic anchors like traditional archways, patterned rugs, and open windows, the figures represent fragmented, simultaneous states of being within an evolving mental landscape. Finely crafted in acrylic and watercolor across a reconfigurable puzzle of hand-painted Canson boards, the pieces are adhered to hand-crafted, hollow wooden frames of varying depths. This physical, multi-dimensional relief transforms the artwork into a tangible psychological container, charting the very beginning of an architectural personal history.