"Like a pig in Tehran" at Café Aunja

poster designed by "Amir Saboury"

Tonight is the opening of an expo of my daily visual sketchbook at café Aunja.

One year ago in the busy, crazy metro of Tehran, I decided to write down what I was hearing around me. It was too interesting to be forgotten. I started to draw and to write a few words as captions for each image. I posted them on my instagram as it seemed to be very fashionable in Tehran.  As I didn't know anyone on this platform I let myself free to write what I wanted. A few weeks after I came back to Montreal and I started a new job.  After nine years of living here, Montreal for me is still a city to discover, a society to de-code. Montreal is full of hidden stories which are not easy to see or to hear. People talk less but if you succeed to read their minds, they have a lot to surprise you. Montreal's silence makes me ponder, think and take my time to observe. This is a gift I will take away with myself to wherever I go.

These drawing were originally accompanied by texts in Farsi. I'm happy to get a chance to translate 46 of them in French and English.  A lot of concepts and ideas I had in the original texts are not translatable. So a lot of texts are way too different in the English and French versions. At the end they are different ways of telling the same stories. I'm now very curious to see how it will work.

These drawings from a Montrealer's journal are named after a Bosnian proverb: "Like a pig in Tehran!"

I want to thank Elham Yousefi and Hamed Masoumi, the couple behind the idea of Café Aunja, a place which is much more than a café to me.

The translations of these texts are done by me but are beautifuly final-touched by someone who interprets me even better than myself : Jean-Christophe Leblond.