This journey begins in a small town in Iran called Miankooh. My awareness and understanding of artistic sentiment emerged through external stimuli, family life, and its inherent dynamics. My household was semi-liberal; I was aware of my mother's more conservative religious worldview and my father's, which was more liberal. This dichotomy informed my quest to seek an identity beyond these influences and conformity; it also provoked an inquiry into the duality of things, such as life inside and the outside. Dealing with major political pressure to fit in with the so-called norms in Iran was tough, with the influence of traditional, religious, and political views. Trying to break free and form a parallel identity required some serious thought and deliberate decision-making.

At age twenty, my family and I moved to Isfahan, a large city with the vibrancy of tradition, religion and ancient culture and a modern, open-minded, intellectual and artistic scene, which I discovered with my first lover. It was a place of total immersion into all kinds of creative expression, reaching deep into the past alongside a contemporary, global-centric attitude. This atmosphere gave me space to investigate multiple facets of my experiences and opinions as an emerging artist, as well as being drawn to explore the gap. This space exists between polarities such as traditional versus contemporary, religious versus civil, and masculine versus feminine.

Internet access was the subsequent influence that opened new doors of perception and allowed me to secretly and discretely involve myself in a forbidden underground Queer culture in Iran. Joining this subcultural group exposed me to the personal freedom of others and the meaningful pursuit of art. I had started crossing the threshold from guilt and was learning independence.

In late 2008, the Green Movement's political group rose in protest against the oppressive regime—studying this uprising, I gained a profound understanding of the regime's persistent grip on the country, having systematically sought to repress it since 1979. This newfound knowledge gave me a greater appreciation of my identity and how it affected my sense of autonomy.

During 2009-2010, an extreme wave of arrests, executions and extreme violence began by the regime as a backlash to the street riots, and these events altered the course of my life. As an active member of the Queer community, my very existence was threatened. Instead of pursuing my studies, it led me to seek asylum. I had the overwhelming impulse to hitchhike from Tabriz-Iran to Istanbul to meet Arsham Parsi from IRQR (Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees) in person. Arsham helped my asylum application by taking me to one of UNHCR's commissary offices in Turkey. I waited seventeen months in Istanbul before getting a visa.

My first year in Australia significantly impacted my art practice. It was a sharp experience of spaces within a space that was the 'other'; what I thought freedom was actually had many similarities with my own oppressed people and others around the world, which become more tangible every day—movement, expression, the structure of being, lack of autonomy, imperialism and colonialism.