Artist Statement
Now and throughout history, people have created physical, social, political and religious boundaries intended to separate and divide. This is why it’s vitally important to raise awareness of the many instances of people crossing these boundaries to engage with each other and celebrate a shared humanity. Today, there are more and more people seeking to explore the way other cultures think, speak, pray, read and write. If we think an intercultural conversation is worthwhile, quite often we must create special circumstances in which two or more members of the human family, who have remained largely ignorant about the other or others, cross cultural boundaries and find themselves in the same room, with a mediating voice encouraging them to speak. “Conversation” juxtaposes different calligraphic styles, languages and scripts on faces with various ethnic and cultural backgrounds. This diversity of identity and expression encourages us to find common ground in spite of our differences. As Saadi Shirazi puts it “Adam’s sons are body limbs, to say; for they’re created of the same clay. Should one organ be troubled by pain, others would suffer severe strain.”
