From "The Container Made of the Contained" Series

2019

 

“I want someone in need. I want someone hungry. I want someone thirsty. Limpid waters seek thirst.” —Shams Tabrizi

 

The Persian word for “plate,” boshqab, is a borrowed word from Turkish. It means “empty vessel”: a container that does not contain anything.

Essentially, a container cannot be one with the contained: the container is devoid of the contained. The word boshqab itself seems to emphasize the fact that the container is inherently empty of the contained and that the two cannot be the same. The container is where the contained finds it presence; and as long as the contained is seen through the container, the container becomes its veil. It is simultaneously a nest and a cage.

 

The contained, likewise, cannot be reduced to the container and is not defined by it; just as the sea is not defined by the ship. Can appearance and reality, name and the named, seeker and the sought, place and position share the same essence? Can the container -the very same container that is empty of the contained- be made of the contained?

This installation represents a metaphor for the unity between the container and the contained, dismantling, unavailingly, their eternal relationship; an endless cycle in which the contained is itself a container.

 

 

-The Persian word “Sogand” [lit”Oath”] originally means ”sulfur” in ancient Iran, one of the ways to find out whether or not someone is telling the truth was to make them drink sulfur water. If the accused person would live after drinking the sulfur, he or she would be acquitted. Collocated with “eating” the verb is now used to make a solemn vow.