Shabnam K. Ghazi

Dear You, Dear Me (Mailbox Series)

September 2, 2025 – September 27, 2025

Shabnam K. Ghazi

Dear You, Dear Me (Mailbox Series)

September 2nd – 27th, 2025

Opening reception September 6th, from 2 – 5 pm

The Mailbox Series is an ongoing body of work that explores themes of migration, displacement, and the search for belonging. Composed of handcrafted mirrored mailboxes, each piece serves as a vessel for reflection—both literal and metaphorical—inviting viewers to consider the personal and collective narratives carried across borders.

It wasn’t until after my immigration that I began to notice the mailbox as a recurring form—a quiet, ubiquitous object that carries weight far beyond its function. In this work, I reimagine the mailbox as a poetic structure: a container of longing, memory, and imagined correspondence. Clad in mirror, each mailbox reflects not only its surroundings but the inner landscapes of those who pass by. The mirror becomes a threshold-fragmenting and reassembling identity, place, and self.

Inside each mailbox are two sealed letters-one in English and one in Farsi. They remain unreadable unless the mailbox is destroyed. These letters hold imagined voices: fragments of memory, silence, desire, and private moments of connection. Though hidden from view, they suggest the presence of lives that have crossed borders, lost languages, or waited for messages that never came.

This series invites viewers to consider the immigrant experience not only as a physical crossing, but as an interior migration: a shifting between selves, histories, and ways of being. The mirrored mailboxes become quiet monuments to the universal human longing for recognition, communication, and home.

In transforming an ordinary object into a sacred container, The Mailbox Series poses intimate questions: What do we carry that cannot be sent? What remains unread? And what, even in silence, still asks to be heard?

Echos in Thread: Responses to Unopened Letters

If the letters inside the mirrored mailboxes were never meant to be read, these woven works are their silent replies tactile answers stitched in memory, emotion, and time.

Each piece translates the unspeakable into form. Threads take on the weight of pauses, secrets, and longings that couldn’t find their way into words. Some recall forgotten places, others speak to futures once imagined. Like letters sent with no address, they exist in the in-between-between sender and receiver, silence and story, past and possibility.

In weaving, as in memory, repetition becomes meditation. Each line is both anchor and offering. These works do not attempt to complete the conversation. Instead, they keep it open-soft, present, and alive.

History of the Mirror-Work

Āina-kāri (Mirrorwork) is an enchanting form of interior ornamentation in which artists meticulously arrange finely cut mirrors into intricate geometric, calligraphic, or nature-inspired patterns. Drawing inspiration from delicate natural forms, this craftsmanship creates mesmerizing surfaces that refract and reflect light in abstract, radiant compositions.

Beyond its aesthetic appeal, Aina-kãri also serves as a durable architectural surface treatment. The art form originated in Iran and flourished during the Zand and Qajar dynasties, adorning doorways, windows, walls, ceilings, and columns across a variety of spaces—from private homes and tea houses to palaces and sacred shrines. It also extended into the Mughal courts of India, where it became an integral part of Indo-Persian architecture.

Āina-kāri is believed to trace its origins to the creative reuse of shattered imported mirrors, possibly introduced by Venetian glassmakers invited to Iran by Shah ‘Abbäs I in the 17th century. Over time, this practical adaptation evolved into a highly sophisticated decorative art. By the 19th century, opulent homes in cities like Isfahan featured dedicated “mirror rooms,” where mirrorwork was often combined with stucco carvings and printed artworks, further enhancing its cultural and aesthetic resonance.

Today, Āina-kāri remains a symbol of light, reflection, and the infinite, bridging traditional craftsmanship with contemporary artistic expression.

Exhibition text written by Shabnam K. Ghazi