It was our favourite activity, my brother’s and mine, to go and watch the puppet show every year during the sultan of the eleven months. Whenever Ramadan happened to fall in the summer, the old sages of the village would set up their canvas outside on the dirt fields where the decrepit wooden houses crackled in the heat, and perform the Hacivat…

Some of your figures share a similar straight, expressionless gaze. How would you describe the mental state of these women? I imagine these women focusing and thinking. Facial expressions can really dominate a painting. I prefer a more ambiguous reading so the painting itself has room to become the expression. I’m often not sure what it is I want…

I know the dead are watching me naked. It restores me. We spoon and fuck harder than all their sick-loving widows, widowers. There’s the relief of nothing being for pleasure. Nobody drives. I beg them to congregate around my invisible thoughts and howl at my original animus but all they want is a body. It’s fine. They rope me to this world…