The indigo etchings titled Migrant, which features general viewpoints of foliage of the raintree which are not indigenous to Asia but imported from Americas that were taken in Singapore during her residency.

‘The overall abstract patterning of these raintree etchings has no centre, no boundaries. This image of a visual and physical world without borders touches on this decade’s pre-eminent issue of population movement and migration. Houshiary seems to suggest that migration and change are part of a universal process, that nothing is indigenous but rather the result of a hybrid of chance, history, geography and nature.’

From Sue Hubbard text

The River is Within Us
2015
STPI

In a poetic series of ‘tablets’ bearing the same title ‘The River Is Within Us,’ Houshiary has combined thin layers of handmade paper with perspex that illuminate overlapping two words selected from the Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Mandarin and Latin languages; their colours reflect emotional states. “One of my interests is in words, their use in the visual arts, and the fact that all cultures have tried to preserve the word,” says Houshiary.

According to writer and critic Sue Hubbard, “language is what connects us to civilization and to the wider universe. We speak, therefore we are. It defines us as sentient, imaginative beings.”

Text has been employed by Houshiary here as a means to “capture breath”, symbolic of one’s “own existence, transcending name, nationality and cultures.” Subtle yet radiant in appearance, the ‘tablets’ evoke light emanating from the computer screen, which for Houshiary “has become the paper for the next generation”.