An author and a painter collaborated to create Grief of Being, a project comprising both a book and a series of paintings, making its debut at Art Expo NY 2025.
As humans, we mourn the loss of meaning in an indifferent, purposeless universe. The author's writings emerged over fifteen years, reflecting the quiet ache of existential grief — some in English, others originally in Persian. The painter’s artwork interprets these words, transforming them into vivid paintings across canvases and the book’s pages.
Hadiseh Bahrami-Shahbegandi
Oil on Canvas, 36” x 36”
Title: Web
Price: Ask for price
Oh, how fiercely it passed — this simple stream of life. Will I one day cut open my throat? My thoughts are the sticky strands of a spider’s sorrowful web — enveloping me, sniffing me, swaying their marionette. I am ensnared — a stranded slave.
Matt Gari
Hadiseh Bahrami-Shahbegandi
Oil on Canvas, 36” x 36”
Title: Unnoticed
Price: Ask for price
Burned match. / Withered fly. / Life barely passed through either. / In my solitude, that is how it ends.
Matt Gari
Hadiseh Bahrami-Shahbegandi
Oil on Canvas, 36” x 36”
Title: Prism
Price: Ask for price
I have become a prism; everything passing through me disintegrates — loses identity. Outside home, leaves are pixelated green. Inside, a bed, a desk, and a dog — that is called home. People have become eyes, ears, and voices. Names are identification card digits. I have become a graveyard, full of devouring worms. Stay away — nothing ingested remains whole.
Matt Gari
Hadiseh Bahrami-Shahbegandi
Oil on Canvas, 36” x 36”
Title: Torment
Price: Ask for price
You are the thick sorrow of weeping together
Who invited my days to the grief of cohabiting.
You are the arrhythmic declamation of my anxious heart.
And my heaving sob
That gasps my unheard syllables — in the midst of the curses of the cursed life.
You are that dense empty gloom.
You and I, the tormentors; the tormented.
As a cord of anguish, entwined, inseparable.
We press together for the fear of solitude.
Matt Gari
Hadiseh Bahrami-Shahbegandi
Oil on Canvas, 36” x 36”
Title: Sweatshop
Price: Ask for price
In the expanse of the anxiety of my days
And the shit-laden days from the hangover of poor sleep.
Ah, to die is a blessing.
An ache that originates in the head, like the sensation of combing along the hair sweeps me.
Weariness has smeared over my eyes
And my eyelids like sagging skins
As if they are my lips hanging from utter lifelessness.
And the involuntary wrinkles of the forehead
And muscles that press together from sheer lack of refuge.
I am an island, atop the back of a wandering whale.
A warmth has passed through me
Feverful
Deathful
Ah, as the years of my life, vain.
Sweatshop laborers are my image.
Matt Gari
Meet the Team
Matt Gari, Ph.D.
Author
Born in 1987 in Tehran, Matt currently resides in Dallas, TX. He started writing first at the age of 15. Matt has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Waterloo in Canada, and he has a keen interest in critical thinking, entrepreneurship, and blogging.
Contact: matt.gari10@gmail.com
Hadiseh Bahrami-Shahbegandi, M.Art
Painter
Born in 1989 in Tehran, Hadiseh is a resident of Dallas, TX. She started training in art and painting at the age of 7 with substantial experience in various techniques throughout her practice as a painter. In addition, she carries more than a decade of experience in graphic design, and teaching art and painting.
Contact: bahramih1989@gmail.com