b'lifebrightly lit and floating in white space, as opposed to in the dark and shadowy con-ventions of museum photography, signals a different intention for her exhibition of Iranian cultural objects. This is an attempt at demystification, not the orientalizing myth-making of the museum. While Farsi does not offer explanations of these objects, in presenting them in this way she suggests their contemporary nature. They are not merely symbols of a static past, they also reference the unfolding now.In Script we have an illegible font that does not carry meaning as content, so much as it does form. In conversation with the play of form and legibility common in Perso-Arabic callig-raphy, the rhomboid shapes that comprise the font also reference the Farsi symbol for zero. How do we say something with nothing?Taken together, Strata of Empire best articulates the inarticulable. In combining these objects, images, and assemblages, Farsi reveals that the experience and impact of empire cannot be neatly captured in language or abstracted into grand narratives. In fact, these great tides of history are as much about the day-to-day experience of individuals as they are about wars and the fates of great cities.36'