Taj ol-Molouk

About the Artwork

“Taj ol-Molouk” is the first character and the starting point of the development of my series *Gods Always Demanding*. In this series, familiar, everyday human figures appear in the guise of gods who are perpetually demanding of the world and of others, their expectations seemingly without end. The idea for the series emerged from years of observing human behavior through my experience in documentary filmmaking. Prolonged encounters with people allowed me to pay attention to details that often remain unseen in conventional narratives: tone, silence, gesture, distance from others, and, above all, bodily movement—signs that can reveal a person’s sense of entitlement and expectation more clearly than words. Taj ol-Molouk was born from this observation. In this sculpture, **the body introduces the character before it speaks**. Her seated posture, hand resting on her waist, forward-held chest, and commanding physical presence convey a sense of entitlement and perpetual expectation—as if the world owes her something, and nothing she has received so far has ever been enough. For me, Taj ol-Molouk was the moment when a human observation became a sculptural character and then evolved into a mythological world. She is not a goddess from ancient mythology, but one of my first contemporary “gods”: a human being so convinced of her own entitlement that she sees the world as perpetually indebted to her. “Taj ol-Molouk” is the first sculpture in the series and the first embodiment of this mythological world. The work is being presented for the first time on Artibition.