Golnar Adili

A Thousand Pages of Chest In A Thousand Mirrors (For Palestine)

Golnar Adili

A Thousand Pages of Chest In A Thousand Mirrors (For Palestine)

Date

2024

Edition Size

6

Media

Repurposed fabric

Binding

Clamshell

Location

Brooklyn, NY

$ 3,800.00

1 in stock


View Collectors

University of Minnesota

A Thousand Pages of Chest In A Thousand Mirrors “Hezaar Safheh Sineh dar Hezaar Aayeneh” is a verse from a Yadollah Royaee poem which has inspired the sculptural pieces nestled in this book and serves as its title. Royaee is an Iranian contemporary poet focusing mostly on symbols rather than metaphors in image building.

The chest in Persian poetry and literature is the container for emotions and I have always felt a heaviness in mine. I created the topographical diptych housed inside the clamshell box using the solvent transfer printing process. Initially I intended to construct the part which is hollowed in the middle through making multiple identical prints and removing the middle section by ripping each print in order to stack them in a topographical manner. The resulting left over pieces that were torn from the chest, initially considered waste, seemed like a perfect complement to the concave stacked prints they were torn from. This “reverse” protruding volume resembled the Aazaadi Tower (Borje Aazaadi) in Tehran once I stacked and glued the pieces together. I did not plan this resemblance as the ripping and stacking followed the contours inspired purely by the formal qualities of the printed image. The clamshell form allowed me to bring the positive and the negative parts of my print sculpture together in one piece. When the book is closed, the chest becomes one with itself.

This book is dedicated to the people of Palestine as 2024 marks a brutal year of accelerated genocide in Gaza. In some of the books, the cover imagery is solvent transfer of a photo taken by Shareef Sarhan depicting thousands of Palestinian children flying kites on the beach of the northern Gaza Strip during a summer camp organized by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in 2011, breaking a world record in flying the largest number of kites.” — Golnar Adili

Throughout the edition, Adili has used her late grandmother’s nightgown, an image of its fabric, her daughter’s newborn flannel blanket from the hospital, and Asahi book cloth.