A man cut off from his origins must contrive a new relationship to the world.
Exiled from his Iranian homeland, Mehrdad Rashidi wound up in Germany,
where he learned the nomad’s rule of mistrusting the impulse to become
rooted: he felt no inclination to acclimatize himself at a level deeper than of
everyday courtesies and superficial routines. In truth, he needed something to
combat nostalgia, something to bridge the fretful hiatus between his foreign
surroundings and his intimate being. 
His solution to the ache of alienation was to create his own secret environment.
It would take the form of a surface over which he alone could exercise control.
That surface was to be manifold: a sheet of notepaper, the corner of a magazine
cover, a flyer advertising a transport firm, an unused voucher for some trivial
goods, a crumpled wrapper. The proverbial back of an envelope was to be his
new habitat, a private terrain beckoning to be explored and cultivated.
Examined from close to, Rashidi’s doodlings reveal an agile imagination at work.
We may discern the even motions of the pen as it ventures into contact with the
paper support, seeking ways to outline and orchestrate impromptu forms. Built
out of closely knit squiggles and twirls, his figures wrestle and writhe, flexing
their immediate shapes so as to spawn fresh shapes that sprout forth, or else
cohere within more and more complex configurations. Rashidi has developed a
sort of stitching or calligraphic embroidery, which meshes together a textured
mass, almost always full of staring faces. But who are these people? Their con-
tented faces meet in peculiar combinations, yet bed down harmoniously, like
rhymes in a nursery song. 
9
Mehrdad Rashidi

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