 Hello, thank you for coming. My name is Golbanu and I recently graduated from San Francisco Art Institute and Art Hazel has been kind enough to invite me to be part of this panel. I don't think I'm really an activist, but certainly memories are very, very important to me. I was reading 1984 by George Orwell, which I read when I was much, much younger, when I still lived in Iran. I only left eight years ago and I read it recently and it was very interesting for me to reread it because I felt like what I've personally been through, what I've seen in the world made me look at it differently and I just like to read you a paragraph from this, which I think somehow relates to my work and the reason I also participate in Al-Mutannabi project. So it's just a little part of the book. It says, people simply disappeared. Your name was removed from the register. Every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out. Your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. How could you appeal? How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribble and a piece of paper could physically survive? So it doesn't matter if you've read the book or not, but I felt like this is very scary. This is something that everybody lives once and it's not that you want people to remember you. It's just a comfort to know that you just don't vanish forever. And I think in my personal work memory has been very, very important and ever since I left home I've been trying to connect and to my memories. And I picked like some of the work that it's like from the beginning of 2008 that I left Iran. So it first started with grief. And at the time I didn't know this work is about grief, but that's how I expressed myself. And then so it was all the roots that are cut. And then after a while I felt like, you know, I can't just let it be cut and left, leave it like that. And I wanted to remain hopeful. So that's why like one of the roots catching the water. So that was hope, I guess. And then after that it was like you feel like once you fare well to your attachments and you feel lost and then you need empathy. So this work for me was empathy where the person that from the lower part of the body is just feels dead, the part that can root, the part that can produce is dead. And then it's taking comfort from the tree. And again, another piece that it's just that the only thing and maybe I don't know if the bird was representing hope, but it was just to know there is life going on. And this was another piece that I did that it was like saying goodbye to your attachments and leaving your home. And it felt really painful. That exactly how it felt that you left your feet. And is that this one? Like to show the, I guess you can all see it. And then after, you know, after grief after empathy, then it's time to reroute. And I always, I always wonder, I still wonder if it's possible to reroute in another country. And but that's, that's how I see it. So there is a heart growing from a tree, but then it's just set free to go and pick anywhere, like as if you don't even need a land anymore. And then I think more recently, I'm more thinking about memories, the things that make me know who I am or like reconnect to my identity. And so these are, you know, very personal pieces that I did. And I'm trying to nourish and water my roots with the memories of, you know, my parents that are still alive, but they're not, I don't have any physical contact with them, my sister, my grandmother. And that's why I did this piece. And then this is a very, very recent one also that, you know, I usually don't pick any, any specific form from where I come from. But for some reason in this piece, I wanted to have like a traditional architecture from north of Iran, where I come from and all the birds of home that are, they're protecting me the whole time in my journey. And then this is the piece I did for the project, Mutannabi project. For this piece, I picked Samovar, which is a traditional kettle that is widely used in the Middle East. And then I, I don't know, the way I saw it, I felt like, because when the bomb, bombing happened, there was a cafe that was also destroyed in the bombing, which was a place that all the intellectual thinkers, people who cared, everybody gathered there. And to me, that became like, like a heart. So the kettle is turning into a heart and it's just overflowing, flowing with people suffering. And, and then I was thinking of Tigris, the river, the ancient river that has been there and has drawn all the civilization to Baghdad. And the river still exists. And I felt like the river is the nourishing hope, something that it keeps flowing, keeps coming. So regardless of everything that is happening there, it will, it will help people to continue living there and preserving their culture. And, you know, they're just reading, they're in the cups, they're reading, they're protecting each other. So that was the piece I did for the work. And then I just want to finish with this poem, which I actually shared with another gathering we had about this event by Saidi, a Persian poet of medieval times. And he, during his time, he went to Baghdad and he studied there because he was the city of, for studying with great universities. And so the, the, this, it's just a short poem that he says, of one essence is the human race. Thusly has creation put the base. One limb impacted is sufficient for all others to fill the maze. The unconcerned with others plight are about brutes with human face. Sorry, are butt brutes with human face. So that's all. Thank you.