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These pencil drawings began as a ritualistic depiction for a larger series of paintings called Persian Garden. Investigating the plants and flowers brought as seeds by Europeans to Persia (present-day Iran), Behbahani meditates on the intricate patterns behind them to perceive the formation of identity tangled with Westerners’ lust for the seductive East. Behbahani's main source, a textbook by American scholar and CIA agent Donald Wilber, underlies her attempt to emancipate the potential allegory of abandoned, censored, and unconscious memories.


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