Statement:

All the world’s a stage, And

All the men and women merely players.

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare had always appeared to me as a mythic being — a celestial archetype of Ishtar’s kind, the goddess of love and war, who interwove love and creation with violence and war, and in whose absence the pulse of life itself would cease to move.

It was in a moment of quiet revelation before the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia that the terrestrial aspect of Shakespeare was unveiled to me — an aspect that seemed inseparable from the clay and stone of Rodin’s sculptures,

and that draped itself over my imagination like a garment, only to settle, years later, deep within the underlying structure of my own artworks —works that, over the years, performed upon the stage of art and unfolded as a continuous passage from one dwelling to another. ///

Or, in Shakespearean terms, as the seven acts within a single life — each demanding its own renewed role.

Much like Ishtar’s descent into the underworld, passing through seven gates of darkness and shedding her outward identity on the journey toward transformation and rebirth.

This exhibition, in its “Season I,” traverses seven stages of profound evolution. In this cycle, the journey begins in the “Realm of Quest”, where the artist’s first dwelling rises through “Adobe Brick”; moves into the “Realm of Love”,

where the organic “Peace Lily” intertwines with the structural “Pillars of Stitch”; and continues toward the “Realm of Knowledge”, embodied in the celestial presence of “The Five Heavenly Bodies”.

Through the meditative discipline of “Written in Stitch”, one enters the “Realm of Detachment”, an exercise in releasing the multiplicity of forms to grasp the unity of “The Formless in Form”.

The path then leads into the “Realm of Wonder”, where silence itself becomes resonant in the “Symphony of Strings” — a prelude to renewed life celebrated in “Hommage to Ishtar”.

Finally, in the “Realm of Annihilation”, the work turns into a world-revealing mirror, transcending all appearances to behold the truth reflected in “Water, Wisdom, Light”.

How shall one mark the end of Love’s long road,

when at the first step lie a hundred thousand homes?

— Hafez (trans. Gertrude Bell)

Maryam Abedi

May 2026