MB: To start would you please tell us a little bit about yourself?
DP: I am a multidisciplinary artist based in western Massachusetts and from Los Angeles; my work is very much focused on history and memory. From a young age, I’ve been obsessed with different aspects of absence and presence, such as ghost stories and historical narratives. I chalk that up to growing up with a single mother, a white woman from the American South, and a father who I never met and was discouraged from learning about, who is Iranian. I was bereft when my family, which includes my younger sister, left Los Angeles for Oklahoma, where I spent half of my childhood. I’ve always felt haunted in some ways—by the past, by places I can never access because it has been dislocated by time, and of course by a body that continues to deteriorate.
