This land once held the dream of connection — a bold line drawn across a vast and divided place. Where East met West, and a railway was laid with hands, hope, and the belief that movement could bring us closer.

And yet, there was sky above us all along, whole, borderless and undivided.

We, down here, keep drawing lines.
Between left and right.
Between belief and disbelief.
Between one another.

We keep trying to connect with words, with votes, with anger, with longing.
And still, we often miss what’s right above us: a sky that never needed fixing. A sky that holds everything at once.

This mirrored rail offers no answers, only a quiet invitation to pause.
To look up.
To feel the stillness between the noise.
And to remember that sometimes, the most powerful movement is not forward, but inward.

Shirin Abedinirad is an Iranian artist whose work explores notions of identity, unity with nature, and the boundless essence of being through various mediums including video, performance, land art, and installation. Born in Tabriz, Iran in 1986, Shirin began her artistic journey with painting before going on to earn degrees in graphic design and fashion. While researching conceptual overlaps between fashion and conceptual art, she became fascinated by performance and started staging public interventions confronting issues of gender, sexuality, and human compassion back in Iran. Shirin's practice took a pivotal turn after a 2013 desert experience led her to create land and installation works centering natural imagery. Using minimalist arrangements of elemental materials like water, mirrors, and light, she crafts liminal spaces that serve as portals to transcend separation from the living Earth. The optical effects generated reflect back our inherent belonging. Exhibiting worldwide in festivals and biennials since 2010, Shirin's work has been showcased across Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and North America. She is the author of a Persian-language book Fashion and Conceptual Art in the 21st Century, the recipient of numerous grants and awards, and holds an MFA from Michigan State University. Currently splitting her time between the United States and overseas projects, Shirin continues her conceptual exploration into the essence of selfhood and its relationship with nature through varied types of new media art. She is currently teaching as an assistant professor at Utah Valley University, where she inspires students to engage with art as a means of fostering unity and healing the planet through compassion.