The birds searched the world
for the Simurgh.
They found themselves.
As Above, So Within draws from Farid ud-Din Attar's 12th-century Persian poem The Conference of the Birds, in which the birds of the world gather under the guidance of the Hoopoe and set out in search of the Simurgh. The journey is not simply geographic. It is a test of attachment, fear, pride, longing, and self-knowledge.
By the end of the poem, the surviving birds discover that what they sought was inseparable from what they had become. That turn from outward search to inward recognition is the emotional core of this project. The sculpture is less an illustration of one scene than a translation of the poem's recursive logic into form.
A Mandelbulb-inspired geometry felt right for that translation: one form repeating, folding, and differentiating across scale, as if many presences were gathering inside a single body.
Attar's birds pursue a distant revelation, only to find that the transformation they seek has been unfolding within them all along.
On playa, the piece is meant to be encountered from the outside: circled, studied, and re-seen from shifting distances. It is a contemplative object rather than an enterable chamber, asking for attention through silhouette, repetition, and surface rhythm.
The printed panels remain unfinished, allowing the geometry and layer lines to stay visible. Instead of hiding the making, the structure reveals process: an accumulation of repeated decisions, much like the birds' long passage through the poem.