And They Laughed at Me

 Newsha Tavakolian’s images and the scent of roses

Courtesy Collater.al

by Giorgia Massari, Collater.al 

A woman intent on smelling a rose. An image that is repeated seven times in the photo exhibition by Newsha Tavakolian, winner of the first Deloitte and Fondazione Deloitte Photo Grant. On view now Dec. 13 at Mudec Photo in Milan, the Iranian artist’s And They Laughed at Me project is a personal account of the collective history of Iran, a country marked by an oppressive political environment. The project was chosen from nineteen others, proposed by ten expert and international figures contacted by Deloitte and Denis Curti, curator and artistic director of the Grant.

A Revolution on Canvas

Documentary Review (2023)

Sara Nodjoumi delves into the mystery surrounding the disappearance of more than 100 "treasonous" paintings by her father, seminal Iranian modern artist Nickzad Nodjoumi.

Image courtesy RogerEbert.com.

by Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

Till Schauder and Sara Nodjoumi’s “A Revolution on Canvas” is a smart intersection of the political, personal, and artistic, revealing how all three can be intertwined in a way that makes them impossible to extricate. For Iranian artist Nikzad "Nicky" Nodjoumi, art is always political. And art is always personal. His unshakeable commitment to his beliefs and his need to express those beliefs have made him not only an outcast from his country but also one of its most vital voices. “A Revolution on Canvas” sometimes feels a little light on the concept of “Revolution” regarding form and ambition—it’s a pretty straightforward HBO Doc—but the filmmaking here is empathetic and inspiring. Sometimes, the work of an artist being unpacked by that artist’s relative can lead to bland hagiography, but Nicky’s daughter Sara uses her personal angle to an advantage, never hiding her love and admiration, making it easier for us to feel the same.

True to Self

An Interview 

Arghavan Khosravi On Tension, Circumventing Censorship, and the Protest of Iranian Women

“The Orange Curtain” (2022), acrylic on canvas over shaped wood panel on wood panel, 64 1/2 x 49 inches. Courtesy Arghavan Khosravi and Colossal.

by Grace Ebert, Colossal

For Arghavan Khosravi, obscurity is the point. The Iranian artist (previously) translates the experience of living a dual life—that of immigrating, of presenting differently when at school and at home, and of wanting to deny clear interpretations—into disjointed works that are equally alluring and destabilizing. She’s never proscriptive and offers viewers several entrance points into her narratives, which center around agency, identity, and most recently, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in protest of Iran’s strict limitations on women and girls.

I visited Khosravi’s solo show, True to Self, at Rachel Uffner Gallery in mid-November, a week after our phone call transcribed below. In addition to her fragmented wall works bound by cord and layered in multiple dimensions, several figurative sculptures congregate at the back of the gallery as a sort of battalion. The women are armored with chainmail and Persian helmets but aren’t militant, instead forming a structural resistance that both demands their right to be seen and invites viewers to stand with them in defiance and solidarity.

Grace Ebert: You have a background in graphic design and illustration, two disciplines rooted in narrative and storytelling. And in the first article we wrote about your work, you say that before you start a new painting, you keep thinking about what you want to say in it. Of course, your background is influential, but why is this narrative component so crucial to your work?

Arghavan Khosravi: I have always been painting on the side in my spare time, but when I came to the U.S. in 2015 to go to grad school and study painting, I wanted a fresh start. I thought that I should forget about all the skills that I learned during those years as a graphic designer and illustrator, and I had to let go of the set of tools that those fields gave me. I started with abstract paintings that were all process-based and more like happenings, accidents, pouring paint, things like that because I thought I’d have to start from the opposite pole in this spectrum. I didn’t have any sort of narrative in my work. 

A new book documents art and resistance in Iran

Woman Life Freedom offers a wide-ranging look at how people have used all kinds of creative means to make their voices heard

Woman Life Freedom by Mina M Jafari. Courtesy Creative Review.

by Megan Williams, Creative Review

One year after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini at the hands of the ‘morality police’ in Iran comes a new book named after the movement that rose up in its wake.

Iranians – led by women and girls – poured out into the streets of cities across each and every province, echoed by satellite demonstrations around the world, as they chanted Zan Zendegi Azadi or Jin Jîyan Azadî, meaning Woman Life Freedom in Persian and Kurdish respectively.

Edited by Malu Halasa, a writer and editor specialising in Middle Eastern art and literature, the new book brings together insightful written accounts of the past year – and the pivotal events of long before – with a broad range of images showing how visual media helped to propagate messages of resistance.

Women of Iran by Or Yogev. Courtesy Creative Review.

The Power of Women by Babak Safari. Courtesy Creative Review.

Social justice movements are often emblematised by evocative, symbolic imagery, and for Woman Life Freedom, the image of a woman removing the hijab – mandatory under Iranian law – became shorthand for the uprising.

In the book, the Iranian Women of Graphic Design (IWofGD) describe the image of cutting hair as “a worldwide symbol of protest against cruelty, injustice and anti-women laws”. The collective runs an extensive online resource making protest visuals – among others – readily available to the masses.

Blinding As a Weapon of Suppression in Iran: Special Report by Mana Neyastami, published in IranWire in March 2023. Courtesy Creative Review.

 

The Persian Rosie by Ghazal Foroutan. Courtesy Creative Review.

Illustration by Jalz of the Azadi (Freedom) Tower with Matisse’s dancers and the protest slogan ‘Women, Life, Freedom’. Courtesy Creative Review.

The book covers mediums that have long provided a canvas for revolution, from posters to graffiti to performance. These examples appear alongside modern-day mechanisms like social media posts, which, according to the book, offer “new, nimble ways to subvert regime censors and internet morality police”. Halasa explains that this mix of tradition and modernity underpins “dissident art” in Iran, which “often blends centuries-old indigenous motifs with contemporary global memes”.

It also examines the various everyday means of expressing resistance: the rare women fashion designers recalibrating dress codes, or the group of mostly women who not only show their hair, but dye it in a spectrum of rainbow hues too.

As art historian Pamela Karimi answers in an enlightening Q&A, “the art of the Woman, Life, Freedom protests operates in informal, tangible and profound ways. Art has become an integral part of everyday life.”

Woman Life Freedom edited by Malu Halasa is published by Saqi Books; saqibooks.com. Courtesy Creative Review.

Via Creative Review

How photography can reveal, overlook and manipulate truth

The fearless work of Australian Iranian artist Hoda Afshar

Hoda Afshar ‘Untitled #88’, from the series ‘Speak the wind’ 2015–22, pigment photographic print, 80 x 100 cm © Hoda Afshar, image courtesy the artist and The Conversation.

by Tom Williams, The Conversation

Through her poetically constructed images, Hoda Afshar illuminates a world overshadowed by history and atrocity. Yet we never see despair: we see defiance, comradeship, reinvention and a search for how photography can activate new ways of thinking.

Afshar was born in Iran and migrated to Australia in 2007. She began her practice as a documentary photographer in Tehran, having originally been attracted to acting.

Staging and creative intervention would become significant features of her work.

Even in her early, nominally “documentary” series, you can sense an embracing of the ambiguity of the still image, and an interest in composing a reality more vivid (and perhaps genuine) than dispassionate reportage might be capable of.

Afshar is now one of Australia’s most significant photo media artists, so it’s a surprise that Hoda Afshar: A Curve is a Broken Line at the Art Gallery of New South Wales is her first major survey exhibition.

What unites her materially diverse work is a concern with visibility: who is denied it, what is made visible by media, and how photography can reveal, overlook and manipulate truth.

How female photographers are making their voices heard in Iran

 

"Imaginary CD Covers," from Newsha Tavakolian's series "Listen," 2010. Courtesy Newsha Tavakolian/Magnum Photos and CNN.

by Zoe Whitfield, CNN

On September 19, 2022, three days after Mahsa Amini died after being sent to a “re-education center” by Iran’s morality police for allegedly infringing the country’s strict dress code, photographer Yalda Moaiery was arrested, beaten and jailed. She had been taking pictures of the resulting protests in the capital Tehran, part of a wider, women-led movement that erupted across the country following 22-year-old Amini’s death.

Moaiery was released on bail in December, reportedly pending a summons to begin a six-year prison sentence on anti-state charges. In January, a video of Moaiery was posted to her social media: dressed in an orange uniform, she sweeps the street and announces her sentence.

Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical Spatial Practice

An interview with Pamela Karimi

Courtesy Jadaliyya.

Pamela Karimi, Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical Spatial Practice (Stanford University Press, 2022).

by Jadaliyya

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? 

Pamela Karimi (PK): As an architect, I have always been captivated by the ways in which creative agents navigate diverse spatial environments, whether it be a gallery, a studio, the street, or a deserted urban landscape. However, it was my personal upbringing in Iran that served as the primary impetus for exploring how innovative individuals engage in a cat-and-mouse game with state authorities over spatial boundaries. My formative years in post-revolutionary Iran were marked by clandestine art and music lessons, held in private settings beyond the reach of government or public institutions. But as I delved deeper into investigating such spaces, I came to realize that the notion of a wholly “pure” underground was a misconception. There were, of course, some exceptions. In the 1980s, for example, many art events—especially those featuring Western music or women's vocal performances—were held under entirely covert circumstances. However, the majority of creative—even politically daring—endeavors since the 1990s have occurred in areas that are not entirely hidden but are what I call loosely covert. It is within these interstitial zones, such as dilapidated homes, deserted factories, and abandoned urban locations, that alternative dreams and aspirations unfold. 

In 2010 I read the late Svetlana Boym’s Another Freedom: The Alternative History of an Idea, in which she argues that freedom is not a universal idea, but rather an ever-evolving concept that continues to shape our reality. What made it particularly poignant was the fact that, following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, many outsiders assumed that there was no freedom to be found in Iran. Yet Iranians, despite the odds stacked against them, have always been adept at carving out spaces where they can exercise autonomy.

Although the book primarily focuses on nonconforming curatorial projects, independent guerrilla installations, escapist practices, and tacitly subversive performances, it also features case studies that counterbalance the long-held presumption of a deep divide between the progressive art community and the state. Throughout the book, I identify the power of art to take a critical stance across semi-regulated and unregulated spaces, as well as regimes of appropriation and coalition.

Months of Unrest in Iran Have Made It Even Harder for Artists and Galleries to Thrive.

 Here’s How They Are Still Fighting for Ideas

The protests have brought new hurdles but Iranians are determined to keep the art scene alive.

Installation view, “For Life” at Aaran Gallery in Tehran. Courtesy Artnet News.

by Rebecca Anne Proctor, Artnet News

On November 4 in Tehran, O Gallery owner Orkideh Daroodi bravely reopened her gallery’s doors after one and a half months of intense protests and upheaval following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody.

Reopening the gallery and staging exhibitions was risky during a moment of unrest and violent crackdown from the Iranian government. It was also socially risky. Galleries and many other businesses initially shuttered in solidarity with the protests. When Daroodi announced her reopening on Instagram, she immediately faced backlash from some members of the art scene, who saw the return to business as lacking in solidarity with the protests. Several other galleries that reopened in November without making public announcements faced a similar situation. On the morning of the gallery’s reopening, someone splattered red paint all over the gallery door and steps. The message was clear.

“They accused us of opening at the wrong time. But when is the right time?” Daroodi told Artnet News. “Our opening coincided with the day that many people were on the streets, being killed and imprisoned, and we were cursed endlessly saying that we didn’t care about the lives of the citizens and that all we cared about was money. But in fact by being open we were showing resistance and actually living the woman, life, freedom slogan.”

While Daroodi and other Iranian gallerists have resumed staging exhibitions and selling art, some remain reluctant to hold solo exhibitions due to safety concerns, afraid of provoking the wrath of the protesters as much as attracting the attention of the oppressive Islamic regime.