Prita Tina Yeganeh, “My Soil Farsh Iteration 2 (The Sacred Shared Labour)”, 2024, 3D printed motifs on hand-ground soil, 200×170 cm. Photographed by Louis Lim

Prita Tina Yeganeh and Lamisse Hamouda explore the continuous unfolding of My Soil Farsh, examining the ephemeral, soil-based carpet as a site for cultural tools and community making

(A message to the reader.)

This is an experimental essay and conversation between friends, artist Prita Tina Yeganeh and writer Lamisse Hamouda. Prita Tina Yeganeh is a first-generation refugee-migrant-settler and interdisciplinary artist of Iranian ancestry based in Magan-djin (Brisbane). Lamisse Hamouda is a second-generation Egyptian-Australian migrant-settler, author, poet, and artist based in Magan-djin (Brisbane).

“My Soil Farsh: Iteration 2 (The Sacred Shared Labour)”, Soil Grinding Rituals, 2024. Prita Tina Yeganeh, Sirena Varma, Madina Mohmood, Celest Munro, Shirin Mirshafiei and Adna Cevap. Photographed by Thomas Oliver

My Soil Farsh is an ongoing, durational project exploring community building, storytelling and ritual through a soil-based Farsh (Persian carpet) installation, and developed over two years (2024–2025) through two completed iterations, with a third underway. In this essay and conversation, Prita and Lamisse reflect on the work as a site for connection, creation and disruption. Together, they trace its evolution from a tool to an artwork and a vessel as the inquiries generated by the carpet threads themselves into broader conversations on the ways in which we move and orient ourselves in the world.

Lamisse: “What really engages me about this work is its responsiveness. It feels quite sensitive and attentive, a project that is open to – and stays open to – possibility and development. In order to enter into some of these flows and understand how each iteration has informed the other, I’m curious about some of the inquiries that led you into each iteration.”

Prita: “So the first one was very much a private exploration, as in, the question was really about a personal inquiry, about wanting to resolve the experience of isolation and loneliness that unfolds through forced displacement… really the very visceral experience of that loneliness, not understanding why, and then not really having effective tools to be able to resolve it, no matter how much counselling… And while there are Western tools that are available to use, they [counselling] didn’t actually resolve this experience for me. And so the inquiry became, okay, well, what other tools are there? And where do those tools come from? Because I have a lens that has Iranian sensibilities, I thought maybe I’m governed by cultural tools instead, and I just needed to find them. So the inquiry came as the result of wanting to find cultural tools in the diaspora and see if it could actually resolve isolation. Or is it that the tool I find only functions as a tool in the homeland? Could it be enacted here in the diaspora? And how does enactment unfold?”

There is an experience that Prita identifies in her body: one that is almost cellular – a heavy cloud that migrates into stomach pain and takes root as an ache in the heart. Like many people seeking resolution to the fractures of forced displacement, the initial inquiries emerge from the effort to resolve pain – the pain of loss and disorientation, and the isolation that results from them.

“Okay, well, what other tools are there? And where do those tools come from?”

“My Soil Farsh: Iteration 1 (The Ritual of Gathering)”, Community Explorations, 2024. Photographed by Prita Tina Yeganeh

Lamisse: “And what tool did you come to find?”

Prita: “I found the Farsh, because the Farsh connected me to the earliest memories I had of feeling a strong sense of belonging. And that became Iteration 1 – I found a tool, the Farsh, and I experimented with that tool through the reactivation of my own carpet at home. It had been dormant, ornamental, and was basically being used as a piece of furniture. But it had a lot of nostalgia and sentiment. So, I looked to activate it as a containment for the ritual of gathering – and ‘the ritual-of-gathering’ became the name of the first iteration. So, it was a physical tool that was then used to bring people into the act of gathering: the Farsh enables togetherness, it enables intimacy, because the physicality of the carpet also creates the containment of bodies in proximity. And these realisations unfolded in the experiment of physically gathering over an extended period of time.”

ITERATION 1: The Ritual of Gathering

Prita Tina Yeganeh, “My Soil Farsh: Iteration 1 (The Ritual of Gathering)”, hand-imprinting 30 3D printed motifs into 50 kilograms of hand-ground soil over 17 hours. First Draft Gallery, 2024. Photographed by Thomas Oliver.

Noticing how the Persian Farsh had often been reduced to furniture or ornamentation, Prita aimed to reinstate its social and cultural function by inviting community members to gather on her own Farsh—re-enacting the communal rituals of her childhood—across a nine-month period. “Iteration 1 (The Ritual of Gathering)” translated the intimacies of community building that unfolded through this experiment. Seeking to root conversations in relationships with memory, land and place, Prita turned to soil, an ephemeral substance that could be gathered, shaped, and eventually returned. The red, loamy clay—sourced from a backyard on Quandamooka Country in West Manly—mirrors the soil profiles found in both South East Queensland, where Prita lives, and her Iranian homeland, thus serving as a vessel for memory, land, and place. Iteration 1 involved Prita hand-grinding and sieving 45 kilograms of soil into fine powder over three months, then assembling the soil Farsh herself over 17 hours—a process through which the labour raised questions about shared work.  Both matriarchal and collective, carpet-weaving in Iran traditionally functioned as a process for the intergenerational transfer of women’s knowledge and the building of communal bonds through various forms of shared labour. These inquiries around community-building, collective labour, and connection evolved into “Iteration 2 (The Sacred Shared Labour)”.

Prita Tina Yega, “My Soil Farsh: Iteration 1 (The Ritual of Gathering)”, 2024, The CHURCHIE Emerging Art Prize, Metro Gallery. Photographed by Thomas Oliver.

ITERATION 2: The Shared Sacred Labour

The disassociation between labour and commodity had come to undermine the role shared labour has historically played in building and strengthening communal bonds, as well as the knowledge created and conveyed through shared labour. In response, for Iteration 2, Prita extended an open invitation for participation and collaboration in the making of the Farsh material. Over the course of one month, 17 women gathered to collectively hand-grind 45 kilograms of soil, transforming the labour of material production into an act of connection.

“My Soil Farsh: Iteration 2 (The Ritual of Gathering)”, Prita Tina Yeganeh’s hands after 175 hours of hand-grinding and 17 hours of hand-printing motifs, Firstdraft Gallery, 2024. Photographed by Thomas Oliver.

Lamisse: “What were some of the questions that came up from the first iteration? Questions that then led you into wanting to do iteration two?”

Prita: “So now I asked, how can shared labour activate community and bind us to each other? How would people who don’t know each other well build relationships through physical labour?.. I had just intended to have a few protocols about silence, not for the whole part, but a certain part of it, because I was also exploring ideas to encourage intimacy, and I had considered that the space held for silence between strangers was really very intimate. What I couldn’t have predicted was how many women would come at any one time and the rhythmic, ritualistic grinding that then unfolded in the silence… And that sometimes the only way we can resolve the discomfort [of silence] is through physical movements… and with the containment of that grinding, it became comfortable to be around people you don’t know…  The feedback from most of the women afterwards was that they yearned for the grinding.”

New Iterations

Now in its next stage, Prita shifts the project from restoring human connections with one another to addressing human relationships with the earth. She explores possibilities of ecological restoration, use of technology, and extends new invitations for community to participate in the co-creation of the Farsh stories.

Prita: “I see the Farsh as a written page now.  All the iterations have really helped me learn about Farsh story-weaving, and the lexicon of ancient motifs that create the language for storytelling in carpets. So in each iteration, I mapped and imprinted a visual story that echoed the way a traditional Persian Farsh story is created…and I did this through 3D-printing the motif designs as stamps and hand-imprinting them into the soil.”

Interactions With the Farsh

“When you hold a cultural object—knowing it does not originate from your own lens or environment—consider what other functions it may have held before it reached you, and how you might choose to value or honour it.”

Prita Tina Yeganeh, “My Soil Farsh: Iteration 2 (The Sacred Shared Labour)”, 2025, Farsh Disruptions, Walyup Fremantle Print Award. Photographed by Ezra Alcantra

Prita considers how the Farsh has been experienced and interacted with in public spaces like a gallery. Across the five carpets that have been laid to date, she has observed and documented a series of unexpected disruptions—footprints and handprints that have, at times, significantly altered the intended stories and intricate patternations on the red soil. Upon first witnessing these interventions, Prita made a deliberate decision not to repair or reprint the surface. Instead, she chose to allow these traces of disruption to remain, positioning the work as an evolving and living print—one that continues to achieve public interactions.

Prita Tina Yeganeh, “My Soil Farsh: Iteration 2 (The Sacred Shared Labour)”, 2025, Farsh Disruptions, Onespace Gallery. Photographed by Thomas Oliver

Prita: “It’s really interesting to me. There’s a mix of curiosity and innocence—because there are children in the space—and then there are people who don’t realise it’s an artwork and walk through it. I’ve also heard of instances where adults feel entitled to engage with the work as they choose, disrupting the artwork by intentionally ignoring gallery directions.”

Lamisse: “Oh, let’s walk through that, because there are layers there that are very interesting. There’s innocent disruption, curiosity, kids in the space; there’s this not knowing and then there’s deliberation disruption. Can you walk me through how you know, as in, how you learnt to see these layers and how they show up in the way the carpet is disrupted?”

Prita Tina Yeganeh, “My Soil Farsh: Iteration 2 (The Sacred Shared Labour)”, 2025, Farsh Disruptions, Onespace Gallery, 2025. Photographed byThomas Oliver

Prita: “Yeah, the innocence really comes from children, who want to touch as a sensory tool for understanding. I would say adults also do that, and have done that, in all the iterations, but they also understand the context that it is an artwork, it’s in a gallery… so they’re actively deciding to disrupt it. I’m not saying this is wrong or right, it’s just an interesting observation. They do it by putting their hands through it – into the soil – because they either know it’s soil and want to feel the texture – or don’t know and are just curious. So, it’s mostly hands. But with children, it’s hands, feet, faces and everything. …And then there are the people who don’t know it’s an artwork. And the feedback I received is that they considered it to be an actual carpet… so they’re walking through it thinking it’s actually a piece of furniture, and one that they can walk on.”

Lamisse: “Even if the Farsh looks real, you wouldn’t walk on it… because it’s in a gallery space and art is everywhere? You would check, wouldn’t you?”

Prita: “Well, they just think it’s a carpet in a room. For example, a courier once did that—he walked straight through the artwork and completely disrupted the print in moving through the gallery. But most often, and I think ironically, it’s adults during exhibition openings who walk on the Farsh because they aren’t conscious of where their feet are or how their movement intersects with the work. Of course, this isn’t malicious, but I find it really curious because it happens so often, despite signs and gallery protocols. Now, I speak about these disruptions with people—about what it means, what it communicates, and what the next viewer might see because of those footprints.”

Prita Tina Yeganeh, “My Soil Farsh: Iteration 1 (The Ritual of Gathering)”, 2024, The CHURCHIE Emerging Art Award, Metro Arts, Farsh Disruptions. Photographed by Thomas Oliver

Lamisse: “And what about these disruptions took you aback? What is it that caused such a moment of pause and reflection for you?”

Prita: “Well.. for me, and many in our West-Asian communities, you simply don’t walk on a carpet with shoes.. You take your shoes off before entering.  It’s a social protocol, almost ‘lore’ …and I think it’s rooted in deep respect for labour and cultural knowledge. And it’s not just about dirt on shoes..yes, shoes damage the natural fibers..but there’s an immense respect, pride, and care. I think that’s underlying that protocol in our society..and thats because of what a Farsh actually represents.. ancient stories, centuries of hand-making knowledge and skill..these are all bound with our landscapes, and identity and heritage. I think perhaps those of us in the diasporic second and third generations don’t fully register all the reasons why, even if we learn and mimic these protocols from childhood, but I think our parents—and perhaps it’s first and older generations— I think they hold more understanding through their stronger relationships with Iran.”

Lamisse: “Is there something these disruptions revealed to you about how people interact with art and culture?”

Prita: “Ok, so when people walk on the artwork—The Soil Farsh—perceiving it as a piece of furniture and physically disrupting it…they’re actually exposing a tension that exists between the East and the West…an ongoing tension between different cultural ways of knowing and being, and the processes of cultural erasure that happen through the way Western societies actually engage with cultural objects. The Persian Farsh, itself is a good example of this. It’s experiencing this kind of erasure through its popularity and exoticisation in Western furniture markets. The Farsh being industrialised strips it of its use, knowledge, and ritual. Things that once underpinned its cultural significance…”

“Well.. for me, and many in our West-Asian communities, you simply don’t walk on a carpet with shoes”

Prita: “This project has really deepened my understanding of this, and the gravity of protecting cultural objects. It’s not just about preserving cultural aesthetics—I mean, yeah, that has its place—but it’s more about keeping alive the intangible cultural heritage that’s embedded within these objects. So for example.. the knowledge, tools, and spiritual practices that would be otherwise lost. I’ve started to register that when we lose the intangible, we lose the tools—those ways of making…and relating…and healing that have actually sustained our communities for generations. I think these tools actually hold knowledge about balance, and reciprocity, and care—and I think they are vital not only for our own cultural survival but for the well-being of general society.”

For those who seem to actively disrupt the carpet, Prita reflects – and speculates – on moments witnessed and conversations had; she thinks through the inherent requests of the work, and of the protocols around the Farsh being displayed in a gallery setting. As she considers if there is a need to provide clearer guidelines about the work, or offering more cultural information, Prita also pushes back on this, indicating that there are inherent requests in the work, and she questions the reflex of placing the responsibility upon her – the artist – to do this labour.

Prita: “I honestly don’t think cultural guidelines or protocols or even explicit invitations are going to change the disruptions. I think there are already clear instructions in place—both within the gallery space and around the artwork itself. You know..dont touch, stay behind the line etc…Instead, I think the work, in its very nature, actually offers an invitation – I understand it’s a quiet one—but it’s to be still, to be conscious of your body, to accept that there are unknowns and concealments, and mysteries that are inherent… not just to this artwork but actually most if not all cultural work.”

“I don’t blame anyone; it’s just an interesting observation and reflection on society.”

Prita Tina Yeganeh, “My Soil Farsh: Iteration 2 (The Sacred Shared Labour)”, 2025, Farsh Disruptions, Walyup Fremantle Print Award. Photographed by Ezra Alcantra

Just as hand-weaving carpets is a slow and labour-intensive process, so are the months of grinding, 17 plus hours of laying and printing each iteration of the ephemeral My Soil Farsh, which, in seconds, is often disrupted or destroyed. In a way, what happens to My Soil Farsh in the gallery space reflects what has been happening to the Farsh, and to cultures, and to communities—a forgetting, a treading on, a disrupting and a destroying of the tools that have long been so crucial to the ways in which we’ve built connections and communities. In the reactivation of the Farsh, Prita is reaching toward the carpet’s function: a containment for community and a container for the inheritance of knowledge and story. By leaving the footprints and handprints, Prita leaves the work to be witness to its disintegration and invites conversation and reflection – and another chance through another iteration.

Prita Tina Yeganeh, “My Soil Farsh: Iteration 1 (The Ritual of Gathering)”, 2024, motif imprinting details. Photographed by Louis Lim

About Lamisse Hamouda

Through writing, performing and teaching, Lamisse Hamouda weaves together an multi-disciplinary practice that integrates artistic and therapeutic practices. A 2025 Keesing Studio Writer-in-Residence at Cité Internationales des Artes in Paris, her writing and poetry have been published by Red Room Poetry, Runway Journal, Arts of the Working Class, Sweatshop – Western Sydney Literacy Movement, Garland Mag and more. Her debut novel, ‘The Shape of Dust’ won the 2024 National Biography of the Year award.

About Prita Tina Yeganeh

Prita Tina Yeganeh is a multidisciplinary visual artist of Iranian ancestry. Her practice is shaped by her lived experiences, her education in environmental engineering, and experimental research into Iranian heritage crafts. She works across installation, printmaking, textile, moving image, and participatory practice. Through slow, durational processes, Yeganeh draws on Iranian sensibilities and knowledge systems to explore the emotional and physical geographies of migration, identity, and place—examining how reconnection, care, and healing can be enacted in personal, familial, and community life. Her practice reclaims cultural knowledge from afar, reframing heritage crafts not as static artefacts but as living, evolving epistemologies.

Tags

Australia | exhibition | G41 | Iran | ritual