Tiles in Menthol

In Box of Muqarnas and Tiles in Menthol, I address the difficulties of experiencing life as a middleman minority in the American South. Although I was born in the U.S., I was raised in Iran till the age of thirteen when my family moved to Bessemer, Alabama. While navigating life in a capitalist world with a dual labor market, my immigrant parents fell into the economic gap that is the “middleman minority”: a place where immigrants are often rejected by the mainstream labor market because of discrimination and language barriers. Yet the little bit of financial success is dependent on the very structural inequalities that exist in the system. This gap consists of services such as convenient stores, gas stations, beauty shops, etc… places that take products from large companies and distribute them to the masses, particularly in lower income areas. For my family it was a small convenience store. The highest selling and most memorable products in the store were menthol cigarettes. Although their beautifully designed glossy colors were one of the main sources of income, they could arguably be the most harmful product in the store. As a way to reconcile with this transition in my life, I have taken these glossy cigarette cartons from my family’s store and transformed them into ornamental and transitional elements that are found in Islamic/Middle Eastern architecture such as muqarnas and ceramic tiles.