This piece is produced by sewing recycled handmade paper into letters that spell out the word “expendable.” The piece is suspended between two pillars of wood and stretched with rope. How much tension can the fibers of the recycled paper take before it rips apart? How much can a society take before it collapses?
Nilou Kazemzadeh is a multidisciplinary artist who works with various mediums including printmaking, photo imagery, textiles, papermaking, and stained glass. The two dominant themes she works with includes her cultural identity as an Iranian-American and the political stratosphere that deliberately affects our collective experiences of the world. Her work expresses her longing to connect to her Iranian roots as an American, as well as the pressures the rhetoric of western ideology spreads about the “other.” These ideas emerge as written language over various imagery, such as family photographs, handmade paper, and prints in order to create a multifaceted image. She is interested in studying ways language is constructed and deconstructed in these contexts. How is language used as a vehicle of meaning making and communication in the greater context of our society? How does language influence perspectives? Who is affected by language, and who benefits from its manipulation? The purpose of her work is to act as a catalyst of representation in an often-polarizing society in hopes of facilitating meaningful conversations.