The Language of Touch is constructed with six aluminum plates. Each plate measures around 30cm*15cm and they are mounted in 3 rows and 2 columns on the wall is 125cm*245cm*8cm.

Sara Rajabzadeh - 2025

Between Us, Invisible Walls:
The Language of Touch

The Language of Touch is an interactive wall installation inspired by my personal experience of migration, cultural adaptation, and language barriers as an Iranian woman living in an English-speaking context. The work reflects the invisible internal struggles of migration—feelings of alienation, isolation, and distance from the surrounding world. By presenting Persian calligraphy engraved on aluminum plates and recordings of my voice reading poetry in Farsi, the installation intentionally uses a language unfamiliar to non-Persian audiences, inviting them to experience cultural exclusion and linguistic inaccessibility similar to my own.

The installation operates through a microcontroller-based interactive system that requires active participation from the audience. When viewers touch the engraved aluminum plates with one hand and a hand-shaped “Earth” conductor with the other, they complete an electrical circuit that triggers audio recordings of my voice reading Persian poetry through speakers. Through this embodied interaction, touching becomes a metaphor for attempting to grasp a foreign language, allowing the audience to experience confusion, responsibility, and emotional disconnection that often accompany migration.

The poetry used in this installation is by Parvin Etesami, a prominent Iranian poet known for addressing women’s rights, education, and social justice in the early twentieth century. I chose her work because it is aesthetically rich and deeply rooted in feminist thought, reflecting struggles that continue today. Her poems strongly resonate with my own experience as an Iranian woman migrant pursuing education, connecting my personal narrative to a broader historical and collective struggle for women’s voice, visibility, and empowerment.