The start of my conversation with Rosvâ was marked by the summer solstice. It is the longest day of the year, when the earth is at peak illumination before gradually beginning its return toward darkness. Nature reminds us that everything moves in cycles expanding outwards: life, death, rebirth. Even the longest day eventually gives way to night, just as winter carries with it the promise of spring.

عزیزم، دنیا گلستون میشه یک روز takes its title from a line in Ahmadreza Nabizadeh’s song, which became a gentle source of comfort for me during the recent war between Israel, the United States and Iran. I found myself returning to it. Its reminder that life insists on continuing and that goodness will prevail helped me to hold on. The earth follows its own rhythms regardless of the systems that seek to dominate it. Even under conditions of occupation, violence, patriarchy and colonialism, seeds continue to germinate, flowers bloom, and communities find ways to come together, care for one another and imagine otherwise.

This project is guided by a simple set of questions: How do we hold on to hope in troubling times? What forms of life continue to emerge despite forces that seek to suppress them? How do we continue to grow toward one another despite efforts to isolate, frighten and diminish us?

Bringing together artists from inside Iran and across the diaspora, this summer residency unfolds as an evolving conversation. Through artwork highlights, new commissions, writing, dialogues and shared research, each contribution considers the ways life is cultivated in difficult conditions. The garden becomes both metaphor and method, a place of labor, patience and collective care. 

A seed may carry hope, but a garden requires many hands. This residency is an invitation to remain with one another through seasons of uncertainty, to tend what cannot yet be seen, to trust in renewal as a collective practice, and to remember that we are not moving in circles, but together along an upward spiral.