Conquest of the Garden

Conquest of the Garden takes its title from a poem by Forugh Farrokhzad, an Iranian poet and one of the most radical voices of the twentieth century. The series grew out of the time I spent in Iran, where the culture of hospitality has its roots in Zoroastrianism: the guest is sacred, and their wellbeing comes first. The Persian expression qadametun ru-ye cheshmām is used when someone comes to visit one’s home, and translates literally as “your step is upon my eye.” In the Persian poetic imagination, the eye is the most precious thing a person possesses: to place a guest’s step upon one’s own eye is a gesture of absolute reverence toward the one who arrives. The works are conceived as small altars of spirituality, love, and mystery.