Nasim Afshari was born in 1989 in Karaj. She has received her BA in graphic design from the University of Science and Culture. She started her career in photography in 2000.

“Nothing’s a Gift”

Nothing’s a gift, everything is borrowed.
I’m drowning in debts up to my ears.
I will be forced
to pay for myself with myself,
to give my life for my life.

It has been appointed
that the heart must be returned,
and the liver, too,
and each individual finger.

It’s too late to cancel the contract.
Debts will be extracted from me
along with my skin.

—Wisława Szymborska

My body has a recollection of dust. A body that is alone and is never with me. I am left behind in all my loneness. I am afflicted with being, but I am not there. I am there, but nobody sees me. What if I am already dead? In the four corners of my fantasies, I weave the desire for a future, whose warp and woof have a mildew smell. The obsolescence of my dream, the canopy of a musty thought that encompasses me like a swamp. In order to be, I have to give up being. In order to be alone, I leave my body alone. A body which is not in my control and does not belong to me. Behind this volume lies a world that I have made myself. I pay the price for my life and get away from here. With the eyes that I have left alone. With a body that turns to dust without my presence and with its sorrows.
Nasim Afshari
2016