“Heech means ‘nothing’. The shape of this work, which is composed of three letters fascinated me so much that for four or five years I worked on it, making many, many heeches… I relate them again to my old chairs and cages. I turn them around; I separate them; I combine them with the human figures because I see, really, the same figure of that poet or the image of the man in the shape of this Persian word… While I worked on those sculptures I was so surrounded by the power of heech that I saw a heech in everything… I must admit that I never before worked with so much love and hope. It filled every minute of my time, and for the four or five years since then, the spirit of heech has followed me in all my other work.”

Parviz Tanavoli, 1976

Interview with Ellen H. Johnson, quoted in Parviz Tanavoli, Fifteen Years of Bronze Sculpture, Grey Art Gallery and Study Centre, New York University, New York