TEHRAN — For Iranian poet, writer and critic Nazanin Rahimi, sewing began as a response to a difficult period in her life. 
Three years later, the practice has grown into “Stitching the Earth,” a multimedia art project bringing together painting, textile work, film, sound and poetry at Golmak Gallery in Tehran.
The project began with a series of fabric bookmarks featuring interconnected houses. Rahimi continued sewing until the work grew to more than 1,000 pieces, turning a personal act into an expanding visual vocabulary of connection and separation.
“Life was difficult and the suffering seemed endless. I began sewing. I sewed house to house,” Rahimi said of the project.
Following the 12-day war, the direction of the work changed. Rahimi began painting for the first time, producing works that she describes as emerging from pain and suffering and as an attempt to find a path toward calm.
Poetry, film and sound subsequently entered the project, alongside the paintings and sewn pieces. Rather than relying on a single medium, “Stitching the Earth” brings its different elements together as fragments of a larger narrative.
The exhibition takes its title from the idea of stitching together fragments of the earth. Its central imagery connects the physical act of sewing with Rahimi’s broader attempt to assemble separated pieces of experience and confront the possibility — or impossibility — of healing.
Rahimi was born in July 1972 and is known primarily as a poet, writer and literary critic. Her published works include Exile in the Body, A Little Sun Is Left Behind the Door, We Are Contemporary to a River, I Have Taken Refuge in a Suitcase, I Have Longed for Happiness, A Geranium Growing at My Window and Be Calm, My Dear.
“Stitching the Earth” is on view at Golmak Gallery through September 11, 2026. The gallery is open from 4 to 8 p.m., except Saturdays, at No. 6 Faizieh Street, Jamshidieh, Niavaran, Tehran.