Afshin Kopaei and Golbon Moltaji

Afshin Koupaei as an Architect, Programmer and Maker, Graduated from University of Applied arts in Vienna. Since the beginning of his career as an architect in 2008, he recognized the cultural and formal impact of patterns and ornaments in the poesis of architecture. His experience as a programmer inspired him to develop his own techniques for the generation and for the making of patterns. Afshin is teaching at digital design and making at the University of applied arts in Vienna besides his independent architectural practice in Iran and Austria

Golbon Moltaji is a visual and electronic music artist and social sciences graduate from the universities of Windsor and Ottawa, Canada. Besides using patterns in illustration work, she broadly employs generative patterns in music production and in visual arts.

Moltaji and Koupaei have collaborated on multiple audiovisual, design and make projects, including live performances in Tehran, Berlin, and Vienna since 2020.

Expander of Borders is composed of three illustrations based on Bahram Beizaei’s rendition of the Archer Arash fantasy. The project emphasizes on the storytellers’ description of Arash’s encounter with human and natural environments. Depictions of attachment to habitat and, his defeat from the people who distress him through conspiracy or passivity. These illustrations recite the process of his metamorphosis from an anguished stable lad in the Iranian camp to a spiteful creature without an identity dependency: by expanding Iran’s borders (though shooting his arrow), he simultaneously hides from the chaos and becomes eternal in the collective’s memories. The piece’s emphasis is on the expansion of human boundaries, one that is free of intertwined biased tendencies and power-oriented accusations, towards a free human and non-human life, under the umbrella of putting an end to tribal conflicts.