Interview with SHABNAM PIRYAEI:

Your childhood ambition:

To work for NASA.

Something you treasure:

How abundantly I am loved. My health. That I know what I need to do. My quality of life. That I am sometimes fierce and sometimes like a child. My children (they are not yet born, but I already treasure them).

Your worst habit:

Right now: not speaking when it is time to speak. Not working hard enough. Getting so lost in the darkness of the process that I keep wanting to escape it.

Before: not being able to handle when people didn’t love me, feeling/acting superior to others, not being responsible with money, being repeatedly overcome with old and current guilt, all the cheap and easy distractions, getting angry and destructive frequently and quickly.

The aspect of your work that’s most important to you:

Precision. Imagery. Creativity. Honesty. Emotion.

Your first job:

Baskin Robbins. I was 16. It was down the street from my house.

Someone whose work you highly recommend:

Oum Kalthoum.

Les Twins.

Flannery O’Connor.

James Baldwin.

David Lynch.

 

 

View Shabnam Piryaei’s work here.