Safar means Journey in Persian, and this series charts the imagined wanderings of my forbears across time and terrain through the centuries, from their biblical roots in the Middle East, across myriad towns, tongues, landscapes, and oceans.

The variety which collage allows makes it unquestionably the best medium for this series. Selecting from my ever-growing collection of papers, fabrics, and lace, and my photos and sketches of artefacts and architecture, I can bring together and scissor into my work the rich delights jostling for position as I try to evoke my imagined ‘family memory’.

I love combining these elements with my own monoprints and painting, together with some of my significant words in Persian and early languages: love, pain, luck, hope. I like to include the names of family members, some known and dear to me, others who live on only in faded photographs. I’m making only an imagined addition to a lost heritage, but I want to honour these vanished generations who gave life to our London family.