The Fallen Butterflies
Life-size dimensions,
Mixed-media installation and performance.
This work was created during the twelve-day war in Iran (2025), a moment marked not only by violence on the ground but by a profound sense of disconnection. A nationwide internet shutdown severed communication, leaving many inside Iran unable to share their realities, while those in the diaspora were left watching from a distance, unable to intervene, yet unwilling to remain passive.
The piece began as a paper sculpture of a seated figure holding a cut-out map of Iran in its hands. The gesture is intimate: not possession, but embrace. The figure does not stand in defiance; instead, it holds the land closely, as one would hold something fragile, wounded, and inseparable from the self.
As I shared the process on Instagram, an unexpected response emerged. Iranians across the diaspora reached out, asking to participate. I created a voluntary and anonymized method of participation as a response, for individuals to submit short videos of their hands tearing cardboard. No personal information was collected, and contributors were informed of the purpose of the work, the exact statement, and how their material would be used. All identifying details in their videos were intentionally excluded or removed to ensure privacy and safety.
Within less than two days, I received over 700 videos.
Each act of tearing, performed in isolation, was incorporated into the sculpture. For every submission, a fragment of torn cardboard was added to its surface, transforming the figure into a collective body. What began as an individual gesture became materially constructed by many hands, dispersed yet connected. The final sculpture is not authored by a single person; it is assembled through a shared act of rupture.
The choice of cardboard is rooted in displacement. As members of the diaspora, we often carry our lives in boxes, packing, moving, reconstructing identity across borders. Cardboard becomes both a material of fragility and survival: temporary, transportable, and marked by handling.
In its final stage, the sculpture was set on fire.
This moment draws from a well-known allegory in The Conference of the Birds by Attar of Nishapur, in which a group of butterflies approach a flame. Each one comes closer, but only the last fully enters the fire, becoming one with it. In Attar’s telling, true understanding is not achieved by observing or approaching, but through complete immersion and annihilation of the self in the flame of love and truth.
The burning of the sculpture echoes this final gesture. It is not only destruction, but union. The work reflects a collective condition of distance, fragmentation, and attachment. Even as the land burns, the
figure does not let go. Even as the body collapses, the gesture remains.