Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Date of Graduation
5-15-2026
Semester of Graduation
Spring
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
School of Art, Design, and Art History
First Advisor
Lisa Tubach
Second Advisor
Mark Rooker
Third Advisor
Hannah Sions
Fourth Advisor
Gregory Stewart
Abstract
Abstract
(The) Invisible Threads is an MFA thesis investigating how invisible interpersonal bonds, collective traces, and communal endurance can be made perceptible through drawing, material, and immersive installation. Drawing from my lived experience as an Iranian woman who has witnessed everyday constraint, collective uprising, and migration, the project asks how the presence of others continues to inhabit the body and shape identity even in conditions of separation and distance. Large-scale self-portraits, layered with other faces on transparent fabrics, copper plates, and stitched threads, position the artist’s own body as a site where personal and collective histories converge, allowing the self to merge with the lives of others.
The theoretical framework of this thesis draws on collective memory, cultural memory, and relational identity to examine how memory is sustained through social relations and how identity emerges through interaction with others. Within this framework, artworks are understood as sites of memory, where presence, absence, and shared experiences are made visible. These ideas are developed through a practice-based methodology in which writing, observational drawing, digital modeling, material experimentation, and installation function as interconnected research methods. Copper, thread, transparency, and sound are treated as active materials that register time, carry cultural resonance, and evoke relational bonds.
This thesis demonstrates how viewers are invited to navigate layered spaces, encounter shifting alignments of faces and shadows, and participate in relational situations where meaning unfolds through their movement and attention, allowing the work to function as an embodied experience of memory and connection. (The) Invisible Threads ultimately proposes that art can create conditions in which private emotion becomes shared experience, allowing the fragile yet enduring ties between individuals, communities, and histories to be felt, seen, and heard.
