Where do the images in your works come from?

I have a very large database of thousands of images from a wide array of sources — from Persian miniatures to 1930s cartoon strips to images that I find in digitized public libraries all over the world. I might find something on Instagram that somebody posts and save it, or something in the digitized British Museum archive. I go through databases and pull images, and much like a puzzle, start trying to fit them together to create some sort of narrative or story.

How has the Iran protest movement affected you?

On a very personal level: I have lots of family in Iran, all over the country, including several cousins in Tehran who were born after I left. There’s this sense of hopelessness and desperation that all young people have there.

Speaking to my cousins in Tehran, I asked, “What can I do from here?” The number one thing that they said was: Amplify our voices. Let people know what’s going on in Iran.

In the American media, you barely see any mention of what’s happening in Iran, which is shocking, because it’s the biggest feminist movement ever.

I felt like I needed to do something. I couldn’t not do it.

Would you describe what we are witnessing right now as a revolution?

I would describe it as a revolution. My father was, like many Iranians, a supporter of the 1978-79 revolution. He thought he was bringing in democracy.

And then once it happened, he realized that the wool was pulled over his eyes and that he was tricked.

When I speak with people like him, who lived through the first revolution, they say this is how it started. There were ebbs and flows; it was not an overnight thing. I think there’s a boiling point where everyone has had enough. And when you have nothing to live for, you’re willing to die for freedom. It’s just a powder keg waiting to explode.

You were 4½ years old when you left Iran. Why is being Iranian so central to your identity?

All of my work comes out of my disconnection and desire for connection with Iran. I feel like I have to respond to what’s directly affecting me.

No one meets me and thinks I’m American. Even though I sound American, they see my name, they look at the color of my skin and immediately say, “Where are you from?” So, I’m always reminded on a daily basis that this is not my place of origin. I always feel like I’m in cultural limbo. Every immigrant, regardless of where they’re from, feels a strong pull back to their culture of origin.

I make art about my own personal experiences, only because I know myself best. I want to make work that’s a marker for this time, for this moment, where, 100 years from now, maybe somebody looks at one of my paintings and says, “This is what it must have felt like to be an Iranian living in America during this moment.”