Taking his cue from Aligheri e Boetti’s work with Afghan women weavers, Firouz’s approach  to traditional crafts is tempered by a strong spirituality and conceptual investigations. Inspired  by visionaries such as South-Korean installation artist Kimsooja, his practice extends links to  the philosophies of Joseph Campbell, Darius Shayegân and Edouard Glissant. Concepts  present in his Ecology of Soul and Postribal series indicate a dynamic where archaic thought  processes enter a conceptual-spiritual transformation, eschewing the post-industrial ‘isms’ of  negativity, materiality and depression.

The artist draws inspiration from his ‘nomadic displacement’, the result of early exile in his childhood  following the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979. This led him to investigate his clan’s tribal past - and the hereditary ties linking him to central Asia, Kyrgyz culture and to the myths and epics related to the idea of Turan. In 2021, FarmanFarmaian traveled to Kyrgyzstan to research current day crafts practices inspired  by the Kyrgyz national epic, the Manas. Venturing into the remote highland regions of YSSIK KOL  and NARYN, his immersions within the tribal and nomadic cultures resulted in a collaboration with the local  craftswomen and the creation of textile based installations through a multiplicity of elements including  raw yak wool, felt, Kyrgyz yurt structures and locally sourced pigments. ‘Gates of Turan’ is the result of this collaboration.

In the ten piece KAYAKALAK panel installation, nomadic tapestries are placed to hang as imaginary tribal  banners - nomadic traditional felt making techniques are here reinvented to serve the idea of a lost mythical  Unitarian mandala, traveling through hand sewn designs of the ‘Oïmo’, a mythical visual vocabulary revisited  by the artist and produced in collaboration with the Kyrgyz craftswomen. These myths are closely connected  to the Manas, and as such the banners symbolize the allied tribes of the warrior-hero Manas as he fought for  freedom and independence