In this staged photography project "Go Home!" (2018-2019), as an Iranian emigre, I am intrigued by the notion of home and how our body, as our first home, assimilates and interacts with the new space. Home is not merely a "place" with walls, windows, and furniture. Instead, home is a "space" that retains our memories and protects our dreams. It is an existential construction.
But where is home? An immigrant/refugee is a home-less who searches for a place to belong. They are aliens who leave their homes behind and continuously try to find a place to become home. They "buy" new objects and furniture in the hope of transforming the non-place to "home." That is why this project happens at the IKEA store, where it employs, exploits, reconstructs, and "sells" an idea of home.
In this project, not only do I explore how new objects become familiar, but I also investigate how everyday objects transform the unfamiliar space into familiar. I also alter the usage of an object to shed some light on the unforeseen aspects of immigrants' life while they are adjusting: a thermal blanket becomes a hair towel wrap; Immigrants' means of survival unexpectedly become an aesthetic object. Finally, I photograph my subjects' relationship with objects, furniture, corners, and closets to re-imagine the nuanced images of togetherness and loneliness, desire and hesitation, comfort and distress, to re-imagine an image of a lost home.
