Ahrarnia sources images of global and contemporary Middle Eastern topics of concern and discourse from media and cyberspace, digitally printing them onto cotton aida cloth, which he subsequently embroiders.

In Miss Iraq No. 4 the figure is a Miss World winner extracted from the net and overlaid with of various maps of Iraq, corresponding to the events as they were unfolding since 2003. The project was inspired by a number of ideas - ‘Miss Iraq’competitions amidst the war in Iraq, a song by Pavarotti and U2 entitled: “Miss Sarajevo’ and finally “Miss Amputee’ competitions in various African countries, where the participants have missing limbs due to disasters of war.

Through the language of needlework, Ahrarnia subjects the images to an intense degree of scrutiny, in an attempt to deconstruct and agitate layers of meanings, power politics and hidden ideologies embedded in them. Embroidery for Ahrarnia is a way to revitalise these images - stitching as an articulation of space and time and also as an act of self- assertion on appropriated and apparently disconnected images.