Drawing Performance
Kashan, Iran – 2021
In the basement of a historic house in Kashan, in the heart of the Iranian desert, I spent twenty days turning a single room into the inside of a whale. Every day, for over twelve hours, I worked with a pencil, hatching line after line—filling the curved walls, ceiling, and corners with the vast body of the whale.
This was a drawing but also a performance; A solitary act of endurance and quiet transformation.
The story of Jonas (or Yunus)—who gave himself to the sea and was swallowed by a whale—has always stayed with me. Not just as a myth of punishment or survival but as a metaphor for the creative process. He enters the belly of the whale so tired, disappointed, and lost. And when he’s finally released, washed onto the shore, he’s someone else. Reborn.
For me, the act of creation is something like that: part burial, part birth. In the belly of the whale, you’re alone. You dissolve. But something begins to form: an idea, a line, a self. It’s painful, meditative, and slow. It’s not just about making something. It’s about becoming something.
This room was a womb. A whale. A drawing. A space of disappearance and return.
I called it Jonas/ Jinoos Room.
It was not a performance for others to watch. It was a performance I lived through.
Unfortunately, despite prior agreement, the owner of the building later destroyed the work.
Like the whale, it vanished beneath the surface—leaving behind only memory and a few photographs.
Didn’t I tell you
“Do not leave me for I am the one u know;
In this mirage of existence, I am the fountain of life”?*
All of Jonah’s dreams are muddied with the wet sounds of whales that scale seas and strand themselves to shore just to find him.
With a delirious head filled with the silent thrashing of whales, Jonah boats through sand dunes and sails the desert. He casts his net upon the plain and hunts whales from the barren land.
Jonah lets the wet sounds of whales drown themselves in the scratching noise of hachures being applied to walls, like the caves of ancient man. As the ocean-conquering whale is stretched and scratched and sketched across the walls with Jonah in the middle, it looks as if he is soundly engulfed and resting in the whale’s belly, once home to an offspring. They joyously ride mountainous waves together as they drink cyclones and devour hurricanes.
The whale comes to life on the wall and starts throwing itself around the room. Stormy wind blows across the plain as the wailing whales drag themselves to land. With a weak and hachured voice, they look upon the sea and call out to Jonah:
Didn’t I tell you
“I am the sea, you are just a fish;
don’t strand yourself on dry land for I am the deep sea of glee”?*
Mohammad Rezaei Rad
* Rumi
Translated by: Arshia Jam
Jinoos Taghizadeh 