Statement

In this series of works, which was exhibited as part of the group exhibition Unbounded Territories at Evanston Art Center, I explore the transformation of meaning through handmade paper inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ The Library of Babel. Working with recycled copies of the text in original Spanish, and English/Farsi translations as my raw material, I engage in the meditative process of papermaking—breaking down, pulping, and reconstituting these texts into the medium of possibility, where language hovers between the presence and absence and reborn as tactile visual material.

The handmade paper embodies the paradoxes that haunt Borges’ work—the tension between what we can grasp and what forever eludes us, between the finite and infinite, between silence and speech. As text dissolves into fiber, it creates a meditation on the nature of meaning itself, and our endless desire to find patterns in the infinite. In a world marked by displacement, conflict, and the fragility of human life, this process reflects the precariousness of existence, where stability is fleeting and transformation is both destructive and regenerative. The delicate, yet resilient, nature of the paper becomes a metaphor for the human condition: fragile, yet enduring; fractured, yet capable of holding new meaning.