دنبالم نیا آواره می‌شی

Fatemeh Kazemi (@afimoh__ ) is one of three artists in the group exhibition “The Bride Has Gone to Pick Flowers,” curated by Lila Nazemian. Kazemi’s practice spans fabrication, writing, archiving, film, curation, organizing, and hosting. Her work engages themes of communal grief or غم (/gham/), underground economies, kitsch, ritual, and subculture, and is deeply rooted in collective experiences. For the show, Kazemi presents works from the series “Dünya Yalan Dünyasi (“The World: A World Full of Lies”). Embodying her alter ego, the “saqi”—a gender-fluid cupbearer in Iranian literary tradition—she explores parallels between celebration and mourning, joy and grief. In a longform essay, anthropologist @tsovinar_kuiumchian unveils the metaphors embedded within the works: “[In] ‘Dünya Mest Olmuş (‘The World is Enchanted’), a site-specific bas-relief poem illuminated in a violet glow envelops the passageway toward the principal exhibition space, which forms the ‘dreamscape’ of the saqi…The saqi distills a local version of arak cultivated from raisins—an intoxicating substance that nurtures transcendence, away from the limits of the rational mind. Recounting the steps as well as the trials and tribulations of fermentation, the work hints at the labor of domesticity and hospitality—and at the kitchen as a semi-private space of transformation, experiment, encounter, and knowledge exchange.” In “Yalan Dünya” (“A World of Lies,” made in collaboration with @jalal_g.beygi ) a sugar encrusted chair surrounded by sugar cubes engraved with the title of the work brings complexity to a ritual in which married women rub sugar above the heads of newlyweds to wish them sweetness in life. To expand on these themes, Kazemi hosted a performative dinner as the saqi with food collective @bazm.nyc , restaging elements of a sofreh aghd (wedding spread) based on the premise of a wedding party waiting for a bride who has disappeared without saying goodbye. Join us for another special event next Saturday, 5/10—an evening of ritual and revelry that activates the work of artist Levon Kafafian (@visionsoftransition ) to close out the show. More info/tickets at link in bio! ✨ 📸: @ng.nyc

Hot off the press! Get a ticket to our closing celebration tonight (link in bio) to be the first to grab a copy of this limited edition exhibition catalogue for “The Bride Has Gone to Pick Flowers,” curated by Lila Nazemian (@just.lila ). The catalogue—designed by @unche.studio —features texts by CUE; curator @just.lila , exhibition mentor @mjosephm ; and writer @tsovinar_kuiumchian —mentored by @thisiskimco as part of our Art Critic Mentorship Program. It also features a conversation with artists @visionsoftransition , @afimoh__ , and @levanimindi ), as well as photos of their work by Leo Ng (@ng.nyc ). If you attend tonight, you’ll also be treated to: –A performance by artist Levon Kafafian –A DJ set by electronic musician @8ulentina sweet bites by @chefseb of @talineto –A custom cocktail with @vogisgin created by Chef Seb with Armenian flavors –Persian Blue lager with blue salt by @backhomebeer Tickets are $30 in advance / $35 at the door—get one at link in bio! 🎉 And while you’re there, check out the digital version of the catalogue 📖 — The Bride Has Gone to Pick Flowers January 30–May 10, 2025 Gallery Hours: Wed–Sat, 12–6 pm Artists: @visionsoftransition , @afimoh_____ , @levanmindi Curator: @just.lila Mentor: @mjosephm Catalogue Essayist: @tsovinar_kuiumchian Writing Mentor: @thisiskimco Graphic Design: @unche.studio Artist Collaborators: @lara_sarkissian , @papuna_d_ , @marika_kochiashvili , @god__era , @jalal_g.beygi #thebridehasgonetopickflowers #cueart

Thank you to all who joined us for Hearts of Sugar, Fingers Dipped in Honey, a performative dinner at CUE by artist Fatemeh Kazemi and Bazm, a food collective inspired by the historical and cultural landscapes of Iran. The event—part of the programming for “The Bride Has Gone to Pick Flowers” curated by Lila Nazemian—was a special night that we will cherish for a long time to come. Drawing upon the exhibition’s themes of tradition, ritual, gender, and speculation, Kazemi envisioned the evening as an ode to a bride who has disappeared from the wedding party. Together, the meal, performance, and works served as a contemplation on the mythmaking and agency of this character so central to the show’s interweaving of cultural identity and contemporary practices. For the menu, Bazm worked with Kazemi to incorporate culinary elements that consider personal memories and cultural symbols of celebration and mourning, joy and grief. Guests witnessed performative rituals such as: 🪞 The presentation of a new installation work by the artist referencing the sofreh aghd (wedding table) 🍽️ The preparation and service of a communal five-course feast 🫗 The pouring of aragh keshmesh (a liquor distilled from raisins that embodies Kazemi’s alter ego of the saqi, or cupbearer) 🫂 The tasting of honey, based on a tradition in which couples dip their fingers in honey and feed each other in anticipation of a sweet life together 🕯️ The burning of esfand (wild rue) over guests’ heads as a gesture of protection against the evil eye Read more and check out more photos at 🔗 in bio. 📸: @ng.nyc — Also, please consider supporting CUE! While this event was ticketed, the majority of our programs are free, and they require an enormous amount of thought, labor, and care from our small team. Programs such as this remind us why we persist in this indefensible political climate; cultural spaces and artist work matter, and our mission and programs will always uphold the values of diversity and progressive thought furthered by emerging and underrepresented artists. 🔗 in bio to donate. If you do give, please expect a sweet gift from us and the artist made especially for the evening 🤍

Introducing @eternal_terra_ear Encrypted Geometry, Stratospheric Axes. ÉTÈ Institute Institute Manifesto 2026 A Protocol for Organizational Sovereignty and Agile Aesthetic Intelligence Investigation: We propose to investigate the "relational friction" inherent in international technology transfers and large-scale infrastructure development, specifically focusing on the axis between diplomatic/trade-based European institutional frameworks and Global South implementation. Crucially, we extend this investigation into the "Vertical Linkage": the emerging stratospheric geopolitics of High-Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS) and orbital data constellations. We seek to map how the transition from terrestrial fiber-optics to high-altitude wireless protocols reshapes the "digital divide," moving beyond Earth-bound auditing by architecturalizing the verticality of technical governance into hyperbolic geometry. This research treats policy and stratospheric airspace rights not as static text, but as coordinate logic within a 3D volumetric system map. Hypothesis: We believe that the current failure of "humanitarian" tech infrastructure is rooted in enforced separation. When artists, researchers, and local actors are separated from the governing code, and the physical altitudinal layers, of a project, the system becomes extractive. Our hypothesis is that Encrypted Geometrical Composition, a method of visualizing roles and orbital altitudes as spatial nodes, reveals hidden power imbalances that traditional text-based reporting obscures. In the stratosphere, where legal jurisdictions are blurred, we suspect that "Equilibrium" between ground-level agency and orbital oversight is the only honest metric for sovereign development. As the Internet shifts to HAPS and orbital arrays, the risk of a "Neo Colonialism of the Airspace" grows. By decoding these structures through decentralized community building and agentic system design, ETE Institute seeks to create a new condition for organizational thought. [email protected] Sovereign manifesto @yidi.lola audiovisual @erotiqqq team composition: @joaquina.s @afimoh_____ @komun.aes @ish.global.online

The process of making food hovers us between economies. Between survival and refusal. Between grief and excess. And there is so much grief that we need to pause and investigate and not forget.

Ashur decided at fourteen never to part from his دو تار. From then on, what he sought was simple and impossible at once: to make a life, an economy, out of sound. That night, the Saqi, the baker, and Ashur gathered to celebrate. For years, Ashur had played in a separate room, not out of shyness, but in accordance with a Turkmen musical tradition—where the musician remains out of sight, at a remove from the gathering, letting the sound arrive without the body. It is a ritual of distance, a way of preserving intimacy. But that night, with the drink the Saqi had brought, he chose to step out of that separation, to cross the threshold the ritual had drawn. “The first thing I was ever paid,” Ashur said, “was a white lamb.”
And so he began a piece with the same name: White Lamb. He played as if the room had opened inside him. And later, carried by that same current, he recited verses by Magtymguly Pyragyمختوم قلی فراغی the words arriving like an echo of something older than the night itself.

زیبا‌ترین بهار

“عدو شود سبب خیر اگر خدا خواهد” I learned this from Leila, a ritual washer of the dead who worked nine hours a day and washed eight bodies, who hated everyone and kept turning a pill in her hand like a faith she no longer believed in. She said that since she was eighteen her body burned from Wednesday to Friday, that the pills calmed her but only the act of washing the dead restored her, as if care begins where life withdraws. She was not afraid of the dead, only of the living—of kin, of nature, of being seen; the only place of rest was where no living gaze could reach her. I think of this alongside the story of Solomon, whose sovereignty was bound to a ring: once removed, a demon assumed his form, took the throne, and was believed, while the king without the object wandered unrecognized, reduced to labor, his voice emptied of authority. Power, then, is not essence but inscription, not being but recognition; without the sign, the subject dissolves into disbelief. In the interval of dispossession, it is said, demons taught people magic—an inheritance of distortion that persists after legitimacy returns. Between Leila’s intimacy with the dead and Solomon’s exile among the living, fear appears misaligned: not as a response to death, but to the unstable economy of visibility, where to be seen is to be misread, and to be unseen is, briefly, to be free.

“Frequency of Grief” - Dispatch 1 || Fatemeh || Isfahan, Iran || 1 April 2026 For the past weeks, I have been in touch with friends in Iran. In particular, my dear sister, friend, and artistic collaborator Fatemeh Kazemi and I have been exchanging words and images as we prepare for the next iteration of “Frequency of Grief” with V Shin (description in comments). Fatemeh has asked me to share some of our correspondence. Below are Fatemeh’s words and images from 20 March - 1 April 2026. “What does it mean when a nation attempts to rescue itself from collapse through continuous war, while its cultural body and intellectual class retreat into isolation and denial, exhausted by the very demand to understand resistance?

Sharjah 2025/2026 @sharjahart

Alireza Javaheri’s wife wrote: “You left me eight years of love and memories, and I cut my hair for you.” Jin, Jîyan, Azadî