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.