Meeting the Cuckoo Drawing

My artistic practice has evolved from a foundation in philosophy and literature to a visual language shaped by absurdism and cartoon aesthetics. I was first drawn to existentialist thinkers like Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Since my mid-20s, my art has paralleled my philosophical exploration, especially the existentialist idea that life has no inherent meaning—that we must create our own. This led me to question identity, morality, and the absurdity of existence. Later, I turned to Absurdist literature—Beckett, Ionesco—whose irrational logic and moral ambiguity deeply influenced my view of being-thrown-in-the-world and the nature of consciousness. These works reflected my own internal contradictions: the desire to find meaning in a world that defies it. In 2019, I left my engineering job and began working in remote, often harsh environments. These experiences were an attempt to live more authentically, engaging directly with reality. My time in the Yukon and on a cattle farm shaped my understanding of ideological conflicts—how beliefs are often formed through pain, survival, and environment. I became fascinated by how identity and ideology arise from personal condition and emotional experience. The political uprising in Iran, especially the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, further pushed me to consider how social conditions create belief systems. In response, I created my first cartoon character: the Gingerbread Man with tangled, elongated arms—forever running but going nowhere. He became a symbol of disillusionment, the illusion of progress, and the constant tension between action and futility. His journey mirrors my own negotiation between critique and complicity. Visually, I draw from comic book aesthetics and animated shows like American Dad, where simplistic forms contrast dark, satirical themes. I’m intrigued by their blend of humor and horror, and this tension informs how I use color, form, and composition to build layered narratives. Candies and sweets are a recurring motif—symbols of fleeting pleasure and modern consumerism. They operate on psychological, existential, and political levels. Personally, they reflect my battle with eating disorders and the addictive euphoria of sugar. Existentially, they critique the human struggle with temptation. Politically, they expose systems that use overconsumption to maintain power, trapping people in cycles of dependency and denial.