Year: 2022–2025
Medium: Living plants, petroleum, photography, sound recordings, archival materials, plant remains
Format: Archive-based artist’s book
Location: Ardakan, Iran
Status: Book in development
Project Statement
Protocol of Care and Removal began with the distribution of pothos plants among households in Ardakan. The plants were entrusted to residents, who were asked to care for them according to a set of instructions. As the project progressed, the protocol changed: water was replaced with petroleum, and the plants gradually dried out. Throughout this process, photographs, sound recordings, conversations, and plant remains were documented and collected.
The project examines the relationship between care, dependency, and removal through an everyday practice. A change in instructions transforms the meaning of care: an act intended to sustain life gradually becomes a mechanism for undoing it. Petroleum, a substance whose presence extends beyond the domestic sphere, introduces another layer to the process, bringing into focus the connections between private life and economic and political forces.
Here, removal does not occur in a single, abrupt moment, but unfolds over time through the repetition of a familiar action. What remains is assembled into a collection of documents, sounds, images, and remnants—an archive of a process in which care and destruction are not positioned as opposites, but become entangled. The book in development will give this archive its material form while remaining part of the project’s ongoing trajectory.
