The sky is not blue in all places
There are mountains, there are trees
There are no mountains, there are trees
Yet the sky here is higher
The shadows follow me
The outlines around the objects
My imagination of the perception of the objects
A single sugar cube dissolved in the ocean
Tied to a familiar object in a suitcase
I have placed my hand on driftwood of memories
From the zenith to the nadir, from the abyss of the ocean to the apex of the sky
Towards which haven in this endless ocean?
“Here my heart is full of yearning and wistfulness
And every instrument whose sound I hear is inharmonious
Let’s pack our travel satchels
And head toward an endless journey
To see whether the sky is the same color in other places” *
Leila Seyedzadeh
*Mehdi Akhavān-Sāles
December 2017, New Haven
آسمان آبی
کوه هست، درخت هست
آسمانِ همه جا آبی نیست
کوه نیست، درخت هست
آسمان اینجا اما بلندتر است
سایه ها با من اند
خطوط اطراف اشیاء
تصویرِ تصور من از اجسام
حبه قندی حل شده در اقیانوس
گره خورده به یک تکه آشنا در چمدان
دستم را روی تکه چوبی از خاطرات گذاشته ام
از عرش به فرش از فرش به عرش
به کدامین سمت در این اقیانوس بی انتها؟
“من اینجا بس دلم تنگ است
و هرسازی که می بینم بدآهنگ است
بیا ره توشه برداریم
قدم در راه بی برگشت بگذاریم
ببینیم آسمان هرکجا آیا همین رنگ است؟”*
لیلا سیدزاده
*مهدی اخوان ثالث
آذر۱۳۹۶، نیوهیون
Leila Seyedzadeh is an Iranian interdisciplinary artist who addresses ideas of imaginary landscapes, focusing on natural subjects such as mountains, rivers and oceans extracted from the subconscious. Her poems inspire her work and function as tapestries made from pieces of unraveled memories that have, in turn, lost their original meaning in order to give life to a landscape of placelessness. It is as if she is attaching pieces of her memories, and by doing so, she is destroying their meaning, thus creating a landscape immersed in placelessness. Seyedzadeh holds an MFA in Painting & Printmaking from Yale School of Art in 2019 and a BFA in Painting from Tehran’s University of Science and Culture in 2014. She was a recipient of the H. Lee Hirsche prize in 2019 and the Soma Summer Fellowship at Yale School of Art in 2018. Currently, she is teaching at the Pratt Fine Art department in Brooklyn, NY.
