Homa Bazrafshan

S.V.N.

Nezami’s “Haft Peikar” (“Seven Beauties”), is a tale of constant novelty, mystery, legends and mythical signs, and the key to understanding the Iranian painting. It narrates the story of seven skies, seven princesses and seven stages of man’s evolution. The whole story is a move through unraveling a symbol in which each ending is the start of a new beginning.

It is a series of experiences and perceptions such as life, death, heroism, and mourning, the combined presence of body and soul, welfare and evil and contrasts of this kind in a boundless chain. Although the story unfolds disguised mysteries, Nezami is not pursuing the subject only; but instead, he is searching for a holy place where a square can be transformed into a circle. It seems as if today’s questions of man, are still what they were in the past.

Realities that propagate in our present; wars, revolutions, tribal and racial struggles, news and events which last less than a day…. We are living in a fragmented world, full of anxiety and stress that has dissolved everything and everyone inside for centuries. It appears that stories of such kind, like what Nezami has portrayed in “Haft Peikar”, are an effort to respond to these issues or at least a trial to run away from reality and escape to a world of fantasy; such a beautiful lie to cover all the ugliness.

This collection is the result of 5 years of my life and experiences of the past and present, subjective perception and mysterious illustration of those experiences and insights in a world which is constantly dealing with a new beginning after each ending…  such a whirlwind that has not completed its way yet.