The description for kismet developed as a result of a dialogue between myself and those who have seen the work:
Kismet means fate and it was first introduced into the English language by a diffident English writer Edward Fitzgerald (1809-83) through his translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat stanza (Book of quatrain verses by Omar Khayyam, 11th century Persian poet),
Moves on; nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it."
"Golden Babies dissociating from the reality in which they find themselves. Loosing their apparent form and solidity, spinning cocoons, contemplating their world as an impregnable castle. They realiz their destiny.
The source, mother-creator, is left behind, bereft of substance, in pieces, shattered."
Special thanks to Iranian poetess Foroogh Farrokhzad (1934-1966) for the inspiration.
"I have been making sculptures of babies for some 7 years...
Returning from an exhibition in Denmark I had stepped into an airport book shop. Browsing through a book of photography on the Bosnian war, one particular image caught my attention: a tragic black and white picture depicting the burial preparation of a small baby which had been shot dead, the bullet having engraved a black hole through it's chest.
I don't unfortunately recall the photographer's name, but that haunting image has stayed with me ever since. We are surrounded with images and accounts of children being wounded, murdered, killed in wars, abused, used in hard labour, ….. .
When I resumed work at my studio in Tehran, the first thing I started making was essentially my impressions of the baby in that image. It had met it’s fate in a tragic fashion. Fate itself and the way destiny unfolds... what if the infant could somehow catch a glimpse of it’s own impending fate and the world about it?"
2007, Installed in Fabrica, Benetton Group's Communication Research Centre, Treviso, Italy
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