Gallery 2

My Soil Farsh فرش (Carpet) 

Prita Tina Yeganeh

Roomsheet

I am drawn to my ancestral homeland of Iran, despite never having lived there. This connection stems from the cultural coordinates deeply embedded in the familial environment that nurtured my sense of belonging as a child and anchored my identity from afar. 

Growing up in ‘Australia’, amidst a dominant Western culture of individualism and separation between bodies and ecosystems, my engagement with coordinates of ritual, kinship, and community-building were gradually eroded. The resulting fragmentation between my body, land, community, and culture left me disoriented. Over time, my grief and yearning for a sense of belonging deepened my feelings of isolation.

In my journey to find healing tools, I have turned to a Farsh فرش —a familiar cultural object used for centuries in my homeland’s gathering rituals to foster connectedness and social cohesion. I continue to use it to build and strengthen my own sense of community with other migrants. 

Employing a Farsh فرش in the ritual of gathering has transformed it into a transitional space. In my experience, the edge of the object became a physical and emotional threshold, marking the shift from the outer world into a more intimate and communal sacred space. Activating a Farsh فرش with other migrants profoundly altered my feelings of loneliness and deepened my understanding of the struggles faced by other groups protecting and maintaining culture in ‘Australia’.

In my preparation to translate this experience, I repurposed 45 kilograms of red loamy soil discarded in my community in Magan-djin (Brisbane). Using my grandmother's pestle on a flat stone surface, I spent 175 hours hand-grinding and sieving the soil into a fine dust. This soil profile mimics the red soils of both southern Iran and South-East Queensland; the time spent preparing the material mirrors the labour involved in gathering materials for traditional Farsh فرش weaving. The soil, once laid, was hand-imprinted with 3D-cut traditional Farsh فرش motifs, creating a visual language that speaks to my own cultural story. 

My Soil Farsh فرش (Carpet) expresses the profound experience of placemaking through transforming and innovating a cultural object.