For about ten years I have been writing of anything I desired – only for myself. I became addicted to this over years and I kept writing things down. After a few years, hundreds of pages piled up. I felt like finding a bare image of myself in them. Lest anyone would find and read them, I burnt them all except for a few pages that made up the material of my later works. That is, I copied my word/play writings on pieces of rag in my studio which I used to clean my paintbrushes with and usually throw away afterwards. And that was how the idea of ‘Thousands of Thousands of Curses on This or That’ – already displayed as a series – was formed. A while later O realized that I have quite unconsciously saved the cloth pieces I was supposed to burn together with my writings on them. This coincidence for me, who had been brought up in a religious family, had a keen resemblance to the notion of Resurrection. The visionary belief in eternal life - and perhaps a remedy for the pains of the living. My second series grew out of this concept. In this series I gave up words. There was actually nothing to write about. With no idea of the result, I started to work. It was rather a result of happening, incalculable happenings like all other things that have happened in our lives, and probably any other things that we are about to experience after death.

Ali Shayesteh