If Only One Could Measure the Emotions of Others

Golnar Adili

My practice asks how an emotion can take visual form. In doing so, I break images and objects apart and put them back together without losing any pieces, making them resilient while showing their scars. In this ultimately healing process of revisiting and reshaping memory, I have infused my practice with play, inspired by how children observe and archive the world.

Ministry of Utmost Happiness, 2026
Rubble, blanket
Dimensions variable

Responding to repeated images of rubble in Gaza interwoven with floral blankets, this site-specific installation also references Arundhati Roy’s novel of the same title. Made in the shadow of Iran’s regime’s atrocities against its own citizens, the red blanket takes on added symbolic weight.

Installation view from To Measure the Emotions of Others at Smack Mellon, Khoda Hafez, (on the right), Falak (on the left)
Plaster, gauze, paper, magnets
Dimensions variable

If Only One Could Measure the Emotions of Others, 2026
Enlargement of a letter written by the artist’s mother to her father
Japanese paper
80 × 60 inches

This sentence reflects on the impossibility embedded in the wish it expresses.

Aah (Expression of a Sigh in Persian), 2025
Plaster, metal mesh
30 × 20 × 8 inches

“Aah” is the sound of a sigh in Persian, linking the first letter of the alphabet (aa) to the sound “h,” the second-to-last letter. Constructed from casts of my arms and torso, the script maps the path of a sigh as it moves through the body.

City Name, Country.