Permanent Collection/

Obligation of Allegiance

Tannaz Farsi, 2020

Artist: Tannaz Farsi
Medium: stainless steel, grit
Dimensions: 8 x 39 x 1 in / 20 x 99 x 3 cm


Born in Iran, Tannaz Farsi is an Iranian American visual artist living and working in Oregon. Her art practice is established within a network of themes: history, language, feminism, and spatial relations are the overlapping territories that structure her work. For the Obligation of Allegiance, a stainless steel sculpture reads “CITIZEN” in Farsi’s idiosyncratic geometric font derived from Arabic script nuqat, or dots, which obscure in their decoration as much as they disclose alternative configurations of state-sanctioned semantics. The typeface both constitutes the term of legal status and simultaneously disassembles that composition through its shifting form.

Learn more about the artist here.