I Saw a Woman Pounding Light into Mortar, 2026

“I Saw a Woman Pounding Light into Mortar” takes its title and conceptual foundation from Sohrab Sepehri’s poem Sedā-ye Pā-ye Āb (The Footsteps of Water). The background is composed of handwritten selections from the poem, bringing together passages in which Sepehri repeatedly evokes light, water, mirrors, and illumination. These words form a poetic landscape in which light becomes a way of seeing, knowing, and imagining another possibility.

At the center of the work, the form of a kaftan evokes the presence of an Iranian woman. She has no individual face; instead, her body is formed through textile, handwriting, and language, allowing her to embody generations of Iranian women who have fought for their rights, autonomy, and freedom. Written across her body is Sepehri’s extraordinary image: “I saw a woman pounding light into mortar.”

For me, this impossible act carries particular meaning in relation to Iranian women. Light is no longer something that simply falls upon them; it is something they make. The gesture of pounding transforms an ordinary act of labor into an act of persistence and creation. Through decades of restriction, resistance, and struggle, Iranian women have continued to create spaces for themselves and for one another, turning what is intangible—hope, knowledge, memory, and freedom—into something that can be carried forward.

The woman in this work is therefore not waiting for illumination. She is producing it with her own hands.