A House For Maryam Mirzakhani

Description

A great mathematician died, that is, a poet of mathematics, or better said, in this case, a poetess...

Maybe everything should be done on the floor… math included… just as Maryam Mirzakhani did, the only woman, until now, to be awarded the Fields Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in mathematics.

Not only that she was a woman, she was also an Iranian… although Iran gave birth to truly great scientists, like Avicenna, for example… and not only scientists, of course, but also, again like an example, a great religious founder, like Zoroaster, or a truly great poet, like Rumi... and in the field of politics, how could we forget Darius ?

But to come back to the floor… yes, maybe we should all be toddlers for a change… to cook on the floor, sleep on the floor, do math on the floor, maybe even do architecture on the floor…

Why not ?

Yes, let’s all become toddlers for a change and for a while… THE WORLD OF TODDLERS… wouldn’t it be a beautiful world ?
And in a way we all ARE toddlers, but we forget… we think we are “mature,” “wise,” “knowledgeable,” “practical”, and so on…
The best of us always were, are, and will be, just toddlers.
Because only toddlers are really creative.
They know how to play.
They reach the sky by crawling on the floor.

PLAYING.

And it seems this is what Maryam did, on her way towards earning the highest prize in mathematics, working in the field of “dynamic systems,” or should we say, “unsystematic systems”…?
Let’s try to pay homage to her by imagining a house that is itself a “dynamic system, “ that is, an “unsystematic system”…
Are we afraid of paradox ?
If we are afraid of paradox, we are afraid of life.
And we are afraid of attempting to become toddlers.
Design a house for a toddler!
Design a house for a mathematician doing her superlative work on the floor.
Playingly… with that seriousness of a child “lost” in play… but aren’t we all actually FINDING our deepest nature when we get “lost” in play ?

Imagine A HOUSE FOR MARYAM MIRZAKHANI, who died today at 40, but who actually didn’t die… because brilliant toddlers never die.
Please send us your work by August 20th and we will exhibit it in an art gallery in Vienna that often shows works from Iran… it will be a pleasure for us to pay homage to this great Iranian mathematician who will continue to inspire us, if only by looking at her brilliant mathematical “doodles” on the floor…

Thank you,