Being raised as a Baha’i half-Iranian woman in an Evangelical Texan suburb created a sense of disassociation from and confusion about my cultural heritage and identity. “You’re not brown, just tan,” investigates these perceptions of cultural heritage through exploring childhood memories, family legacy, and media imagery. The project proposes new forms of hybridity via Iranian memory objects and videos created out of the material of the Texan suburbs where I grew up.

These components will manifest in a comprehensive multimedia installation, recreating an imagined Iranian/suburban home space. The sculptures in the space are suburban/Iranian mash-up memory objects: a Persian rug made of suburban couch upholstery, roses made of Christmas wrapping paper, a backgammon board made from my childhood Monopoly board, and calligraphy designed using kid’s Crayola markers. I also have created a series of videos to screen in the space on a television set I am constructing. These videos are designed in different television styles (cooking show, horror movie trailer, music video) for consumption in the medium I consumed while shaping my identity.

Below are stills from the videos I created. Click on the link to view an excerpt of each video.

stills from ItaliaIrania!, dv, 2009, total running time: 5:30.
ItaliaIrania! is a short film created in the style of a television fusion cooking show. Through inhabiting my parents to cook a meal together as a family, I draw from childhood memories and personal emotional states to reconfigure an emotionally void media format while exploring the notion of how culture is iconized via its food.

still from The Djinns Will Eat You, dv, 2009, total running time: 1:15.
The Djinns Will Eat You is a horror movie trailer set to the Persian black metal band Zantoor.  It explores the idea of interior/exterior space.

still from KhaliKoobeh, dv, 2009, total running time: 2:00.
KhaliKoobeh is created in the style of a Persian music video using composited images from the Texan suburbs where I grew up. Singing the only 5 words I remember in Farsi (very good, why, grapes, goodbye), I explore not only the idea of being an outsider to both cultures, but also the power of language as a divisive or unifying device.

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