Ashura explores the execution of two of my cousins immediately following the Iranian Revolution in 1979 during a violent campaign aimed at discouraging a Kurdish/Sunni revolt against the new regime. The piece is a meditation on how memories, dreams, and their repression shape a complicated and often contradictory idea of home in the psyche of the displaced. In this animation one sees the back of a woman as she self-flagellates–referencing the Shiite ritual of Ashura, a commemoration of the foundational event of Shi’ism, the martyrdom of Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Imam Hossein. The repeated action begins to cut into her back revealing an image based on a photograph of my cousins’ execution, thereby replacing traditional images of Hossein with the contemporary image of martyrdom. By having the action unfold on a woman's body, I am not only questioning the status of my ethnic minority within Iranian society, but also that of my gender.