Light carries a song of resistance through Rive Roshan’s Garden of Hope

A Persian song sets the light in motion inside Garden of Hope. Behind strips of coloured, textured glass, bright elements travel through three upright structures, giving an architectural form to rhythms associated with resistance and remembrance. Presented by Rive Roshan at BOON_MONCEAU during Paris Art Week 2026, the installation brings a collective memory into a room where its presence is felt through colour, movement and sound.

The Amsterdam-based practice, founded in 2015 by Golnar Roshan and Ruben de la Rive Box, begins much of its work with close observation of passing phenomena: reflections on water, a changing sky, the light at different hours of the day. Here, that attention meets a more personal history. Roshan’s Iranian-Australian heritage and de la Rive Box’s Dutch background inform a work conceived as an invitation to pause and reconnect amid political tension and conflict.

A song held in glass

The three monoliths are assembled using the studio’s glass marquetry technique, which brings different textures and optical effects into a single surface. Amber, rose and darker red bands divide the forms vertically. Some sections scatter the light into a soft glow; others break it into sharper lines. As the illuminated elements move behind them, the glass makes the same source appear to change character.

Studio Ravenhorst developed the engineered lighting that translates the rhythms of a historic Persian anthem into movement. The version used for the work is voiced by Nava, an AI-generated Iranian singer created by Farbod Mehr. Its contemporary means of production sits alongside the song’s inherited cultural significance, allowing a remembered voice of resistance to take another form.

The work also draws on the Persian symbolism of the tulip as an image of rebirth and memory. The verse behind the project connects the death of a country’s young people with the blossoming of tulips. Rive Roshan carries that image into an installation concerned with continuity and renewal. Its luminous surfaces hold this difficult history within a setting intended for shared reflection.

A different setting, a changing light

Garden of Hope first appeared at Alcova during Milan Design Week 2026, within the grounds of the former Baggio Military Hospital. Paris introduces another architectural context: a nineteenth-century hôtel particulier overlooking Parc Monceau, reimagined by BOON_ROOM as a residence bringing art, collectible design and interiors together. The supplied photographs show the monoliths in a pale, daylight-filled room, their coloured glass standing against white walls and the sloping ceiling.

This setting gives the work two sources of variation. Daylight changes the surfaces through reflection and refraction, while the moving illumination provides its own rhythm from within. The structures remain still, yet what can be seen across their faces keeps shifting. Their scale places those changes alongside the body, inviting visitors to move between the columns and look again from another position.

The time of a day

Alongside the installation, Rive Roshan presented the Circadian Marquetry Panels, which bring the studio’s glass research into a more intimate register. Their combinations of colour and texture evoke light moving across water. The conceptual reference is the body’s daily cycle of waking and rest, shaped by its relationship with environmental light.

Within BOON_MONCEAU, the panels respond to the changing daylight of the house. Their subject is time experienced at the scale of a day, while Garden of Hope reaches into the longer duration of cultural memory. Together, the works give Rive Roshan’s interest in fleeting visual phenomena an emotional dimension: light can register the passage of an hour, but it can also carry something remembered.

The presentation was introduced for Paris Art Week, 19–25 October 2026, at BOON_MONCEAU, 6 Rue Murillo, Paris.

Project Credits

Works: Garden of Hope; Circadian Marquetry Panels
Artists: Golnar Roshan and Ruben de la Rive Box / Rive Roshan / @riveroshan
Presentation: Paris Art Week 2026
Venue: BOON_MONCEAU, 6 Rue Murillo, 75008 Paris, France
Presented by: BOON_ROOM / @boon_room
Kinetic lighting: Studio Ravenhorst / @studio_ravenhorst
AI-generated voice: Nava, created by Farbod Mehr
Photography: Alexandra de Cossette / @alexandradecossette
Press materials: Rota&Jorfida