Monir’s calligraphy drawings from the 1980s demonstrate her increasing confidence of line and color with bold and intricate strokes. The artist completed these works while living in New York during a period of exile after the Iranian Revolution in 1978. Without access to her studio and the master craftsmen she worked with to build her mirror-mosaic works, Monir turned to drawing as a way to experiment artistically and connect with her home country from afar. Calligraphic script has a rich history in Persian culture and was originally developed to suitably transmit the beauty of the word of God in writing. She employed the Persian Ta’liq cursive style in these drawings, unifying horizontal and vertical strokes that she wove together in a series of vibrantly colored calligraphies. These works emphasize free-flowing and spontaneous forms that spiral and radiate across the page yet reinforce a remarkable sense of overall compositional structure.