Strait of Hormuz
Saya Behnam · 2026 · a series in progress
This series begins with red, yellow, and brown ochre I gathered years ago from the Strait of Hormuz, the country of my birth. After the recent conflict in that region, the pigments carried a different weight — and as an Iranian-American woman, I began to build, and to burn, in response.
Each work is made by hand, petal by petal, from thousands of individually torn and folded sheets of mulberry, Kozo, and tissue paper, layered with that
ochre. Then I bring controlled fire to a surface that took weeks to build. The dark marks are fire on the paper itself. What had been a celebration of nature becomes a meditation on what remains when nature is broken beauty, ruin, and memory held in a single frame.
Hormuz
Handmade mulberry paper, red/yellow/brown ochre from the Strait of Hormuz, archival mineral pigments, controlled fire · 16 × 16 × 4 in · 2026
The first work in the series. A surface saturated edge to edge in ochre, then marked with fire — intimate in scale and quietly intense. It opens the formal investigation the larger series carries forward.
Hormuz 2
Handmade mulberry paper, archival mineral pigments, controlled fire · 16 × 16 × 3 in · 2026
The formal opposite of Hormuz: an open ivory field held in restraint, with the burning intensifying into three scorched concentric circles at the center. The form reads as both target and ripple, both wound and water-ring.
Hormuz 3
Handmade mulberry, Kozo, and tissue papers, ochre from the Strait of Hormuz, archival mineral pigments, controlled fire · 22 in diameter (circular), 5.5 in deep · 2026
he largest work in the series. A circular form built from the perimeter inward, its palette deepening from pale yellow ochre at the rim through umber and sienna into a burned charcoal core — at once an aerial view of a contested basin and a wound. The gradient from beauty into ruin is the work.
