Joz

Artist Statement: My art is about ideas and concepts, as well as visual compositions and aesthetics. I feel drawn towards questions about the nature of life, (Who we are? Why we are?) and seek to present situations that are visually inspiring and conceptually engaging. I am fascinated with language and in particular how it can be used to express these ideas. I am also interested in words and their relationship to meaning, and questions such as: What is the nature of our understanding through language? What is our relationship to meaning through language? And what exactly gives meaning to a word? My current body of work is a series of calligraphic explorations that reflect some of these concerns.

I am fascinated with how meaning is attached to words, how words can slowly lose their meaning, and how they have the potential to communicate a range of subtle experiences. I am particularly intrigued with mystical writings and poetry, because they seek to express the most delicate of experiences. It is inspiring how a mystic, having encountered a reality beyond the range of the senses and intellect, uses the same common, limited language, in order to express her uncommon experience of the unlimited. Suddenly, the ordinary becomes extra-ordinary and the hackneyed is transformed into poetry. In these works, I have sought to re-present these writings in such a way as to both meditatively explore the form and meaning of the words themselves and to honor the powerful meaning behind each poem; thereby creating a dialogue between that which is apparent and that which is hidden.

Each of these pieces consists of a single line of poetry written in a traditional persian calligraphic style. Each line is created using a digital tablet and a customized calligraphic pen tool. This line is repeated over and over again to create the background. The same characters are presented in the foreground but at a much larger scale, and are altered so that they are nearly unrecognizable as conventional letters. The final result is a piece with a distinct relationship between a jumbled background of words and characters and a foreground that is purely expressive.