This photograph uses revolutionary iconography to engage with Sheida Soleimani’s parents’ stories of resistance. The composition features a checkerboard pattern, a recurring motif across the Ghostwriter series, which references the ancient Persian game of Snakes and Ladders, a game of luck and chance, evoking the risks refugees must navigate to survive. Two birds in her care – chukars, native to Iran – appear within the scene, linking memory and personal history.

The tulips reference a revolutionary ballad her parents sang to her as a child: The red flower of the sun has risen once again, the night has escaped. The mountains are covered with tulips, the tulips are wide awake. They are planting sunshine in the mountains, flower by flower. Tulips serve as a symbol of leftist revolution in Iran: after their bloom fades, their bulbs remain dormant through winter and quietly multiply, returning each year in greater numbers in a cycle evoking resilience, renewal, and the persistence of revolutionary struggle.