My Wish Exhibition

Context

The «My Wish» exhibition was held at Dena Gallery in 2016. At the time, I was only 18 years old and at the very beginning of my career at Parsi Studio. The exhibition supported children who lacked proper guardians or were facing severe financial hardship. The children drew their wishes, submitted them to the gallery, and the gallery displayed the drawings on the wall. Donors could then choose which wish they wanted to fulfill — wishes the children had drawn with total care and attention to detail, down to worrying that, say, the dress of the Barbie doll they hoped for wouldn’t have the right frills.

Process

This exhibition was my first serious opportunity at Parsi Studio, so I knew there had to be a strong idea behind it. Instead of combining one of the children’s drawings into a finished poster, I decided to use a balloon as a symbol of a wish — a plain, detail-free vector balloon placed at the center of the poster.

When I showed this to Farshid Parsikia, the studio director, he went silent and just looked at me. Nervous, I started explaining the fuller idea: we would print the posters with an empty balloon, take them to children’s charity and support centers, and distribute them among the kids. They would draw on the balloon themselves, and then we would exhibit a collection of these «wish» posters — completed by the children — as the campaign, with the cycle able to continue on. Farshid liked the idea and gave the go-ahead for it to move into production.

To make sure the poster also had a presence in digital spaces, I took a piece of one child’s drawing and used it to complete the poster visually in its digital version.

Outcome

The poster wasn’t a fixed image but a participatory system: a design that was only completed with the help of the very children the exhibition was about — turning it from a piece of graphic design into a conceptual, human idea.