“This Account is not The Whole Truth”
As I was revisiting Nezami’s Khosrow and Shirin, I became interested in the romantic sub-story of Farhad’s love for Shirin, so I tried to give a different account of the narrative. I broke down the story to smaller fragments and by putting the pieces back together, mingling it with my own perception of the characters, and making new plots, I recreated the legend in a puzzle-like fashion. I adopted a new way of approaching the image and through the combination of realistic images with simple surfaces and lines, I made a mental game from the character’s relations to each other. When the pieces are juxtaposed properly, Nezami’s intended plot in Khosrow and Shirin will be created, and if they are assembled differently, each character will have a different fate.

Leila Eskandari (b. 1987, Tehran, Iran) has an MFA in Painting from the Alzahra University, Tehran. Her works have been included in several group exhibitions. She lives and works in Tehran.