Afarin Rahmanifar
In Terms and Conditions, women's bodies become battlegrounds where speech is regulated, memory censored, and truth rewritten; in Anatomic Myth of Self, fragmented figures layered with anatomical forms, mythic imagery, and Persian miniature motifs expose the tension between interior worlds and the performed self. These fractured bodies evoke inherited memory and cultural mythology living beneath the skin, suggesting identity as a constellation of stories, wounds, and ancestral knowledge. The charged exchange between the figures—one leaning with tenderness and fatigue, the other upright in strength and quiet reckoning—elevates the scene into a ritual space shaped by ornate headdresses, symbolic motifs, and luminous color. As an Iranian American woman shaped by exile, I render the body in both dissection and reclamation, asserting that my story—and the stories of the women I carry—cannot be silenced, and that resilience, hybridity, and self-authored power remain central to this work.
- Afarin Rahmanifar