assalgheysari.com

Marie lived from 2010 to 2014. She traveled the world, met many people, celebrated the mundane in life, and never worried about tomorrow. She was an alter-ego, a constructed persona who represented the unconscious embodiment of my Western ideals of beauty. As I grew in self-awareness and self-acceptance of my Iranian identity, I realized that Marie had fulfilled her purpose. In honor of the important role she had played in my life, I staged her funeral and memorial in my garden, and facilitated a Letting Go Ritual, inviting the public to also dispose, by way of a "self-confession", of that which no longer served them in their own lives.