Artist's Statement

Abstract

Artist's Statement Parisa Karami (bio) I became aware of the Muslim burials in the Polish village of Bohoniki when watching an episode of Witness on Euronews. I had been watching news reports of mangled men, women, and children attempting to escape countries in the Middle East and Africa into Europe for some years. Bodies washing up on seashores, being smothered, suffocated, and abused on the road, in trucks, boats, and camps. However, the story of the burials in Bohoniki struck me not only as decency toward human life but a chance for wholeness in members of the Polish Mosque—living as Europeans on the outer edges of Refugee—never fully assimilated into European society, but able to create a diasporic community. So I searched for more articles and information about this tiny mosque on the border of Poland and Belarus. As the small kingdoms of Europe close in on themselves, their proud nationalistic citizens become further and further inverted versions of their own worst traits. The Imam and his fellow Muslims at the Bohoniki Mosque are able to transcend this nihilistic tendency by honoring and restoring dignity to those they, too, could have cast as Other. The area surrounding the mosque is now a sacred burial zone of men, women, and children—a transcendent zone of Other as Self—where no nationalist can tread. My father too died young, a Middle Eastern outsider in exile. His story was not as brutal as that of a toddler freezing to death in a forest in Europe. He was wrapped in a white shroud, head turned towards Mecca—a proper burial. Perhaps this is why the story of the mosque in Bohoniki was so redemptive of humanity in my mind. To paint this sacred graveyard is to make bearable the fact that there are those who oppose its very existence. [End Page 177] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 178] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 179] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 180] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 181] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 182] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 183] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 184] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 185] Parisa Karami Parisa Karami is an artist living in the Hudson Valley with her family. She has various ongoing projects such as Reyna De La Tierra and Cinema Scenes. Recent works can be seen on media outlets such as Mc Sweeney's, Northwest Review and Drunk Monkeys. For more information you can visit www.parisakaramipaintings.com. Copyright © 2022-2023 Pleiades and Pleiades Press