Scientists have labeled the queen bee “the perfect female.”

She is attended to and fed most of her life.
Distinctive in appearance, she measures approximately a quarter inch longer than all other bees.
She can produce up to 3.000 eggs per day at the height of reproduction.
In essence, she is a perfect egg-laying machine.

Although the name might imply it, a Queen has no control over the hive. A good queen is of quality stock and is well reared, well fed and well mated. She is continuously surrounded by worker attendants, who actively meet her needs, feeding her, disposing of her waste and licking her body to provide the pheromones needed for her to fulfill her sole function as the colony’s reproducer.

As a woman reared in a restricted society I was forced to wear a veil. Passivity was, and is, the feminine ideal. I experienced feelings of fear and anxiety over whether or not I had sufficiently suppressed and covered myself—my public laughs and stares muffled. This in contrast to an open and warm atmosphere inside my home led me to question facts, humanity, femininity and love, constantly searching for my identity.

Here still, as I walk the streets of Brooklyn alone, not wearing my veil, I carry all the same fears and insecurities. I am not looked at as an artist, but rather as a female Iranian artist. Here still, I seek my identity as a human being but I find myself on a universal stage playing my role as a victim of sexism and prejudice. Here still, the fears, the questions, the doubts and the struggles are alive. They come with me in different shapes but reminiscent tastes.
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The Takers is motivated exclusively by the tangible experiences obtained in the United States. Sooner than I expected, I was trapped within the whirlpool of consumption, sometimes violently so to ‘take’ and to ‘win.’ My first inspiration for painting this series was watching the NBA Playoff games. I saw the court as life in this country. The fights, the tricks, the communication, the ambitions, the violence, the beauty, the anxieties, the power, the defeat, the frustration, the acceptance and betrayal—between teammates and competitors. All of these in order to take the ball, place it in the basket and gain victory. This parallel game surrounds me here, in the name of freedom, democracy and justification.

The diptychs and triptychs in the Takers series were inspired by a movie by Kurosawa I saw when I was 17. A woman is raped and her husband is killed in a forest in ancient Japan. The film gives us four different viewpoints of this act, in which every aspect of humanity is stripped and taken. Kurosawa masterfully creates each viewpoint as acceptable and objective, leaving us to wonder “Which is the truth?” if there is any. The diptychs and triptychs also allow us to question multiple perspectives, motivations and ‘facts’ of taking.
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