An interview about art, hope and building peace

with Iranian American artist Shaudi Bianca Vahdat

Shaudi Bianca Vahdat spoke with Real Change about the importance of representation in art and how it can be a source of inspiration during difficult times.

Photo courtesy of Shaudi Bianca Vahdat.

by Nura Ahmed, Real Change

When documenting the stories of everyday marginalized voices, it is often those closest to the problems who hold the real stories. Stories that become intrinsically linked to the belonging, displacement and memory of the American immigrant experience.

Too many immigrant stories are not told by us, so we are often left out, hoping to see representation where we don’t often fit. When we encounter artists who are working to change the everyday narrative, who are offering a piece of their humanity to the world, hoping to be received and embraced by all, we start to see a significant shift to the national paradigm.

Shaudi Bianca Vahdat, an Iranian-American musician, theater artist and composer based in Seattle, Washington is one of those artists who see themselves as a reflection of the world that we are in. She has a background in theater, performance, producing, directing and composing for theater. She is also a songwriter outside of her theater work. Vahdat studied both drama and music at the University of Washington and earned her master’s degree from the Berkelee College of Music. Ever since she was in her early 20s, she has been a part of Seattle’s extended theater and music communities.

‘Sunrise at the Vortex’

Behind Nima Nabavi’s vast geometric vortex painting: converging energy, labor, and structure

Image by Tonee Harbert. Courtesy of The Third Line and Designboom.

by Ravail Khan, Designboom

Roswell2223: An Energetic Anchor to Sunrise at the Vortex

Nima Nabavi brings together a constellation of radiant energies that converge with structural order in his solo exhibition Sunrise at the Vortex in Dubai. On view at The Third Line, Roswell2223 forms a gravitational center, laying out a monumental hand-drawn piece that stretches across an 18-foot-long canvas. Saturated with color and encrusted with detail, it distills the core of Nabavi’s practice which seeks to evoke awe, resolve inner resonance, bridge abstraction with emotion, and manifest precise complexities and natural energies through geometry.

Created over the course of a year during a residency in New Mexico, Roswell2223 marks the furthest the Iranian artist has ever pushed the limits of his process. The result is a sprawling, crystalline composition that channels a spiritual intensity and meditative clarity. While the exhibition presents a range of works — some meticulously hand-rendered, others made with the aid of architectural pen plotters — they all maintain a sense of transcendence. Whether plotted by machine or drawn line by line, Nabavi’s geometries work somewhat like elusive discoveries. ‘These patterns, structures and geometries carry a magical appeal that I’m not getting any closer to understanding,’ he tells designboom. ‘It feels more like archaeology to me – I’m finding and exploring these visual phenomena, not inventing them.’ We spoke with the artist to learn more about the methods, philosophies, and intentions behind Roswell2223 and how they resonate with the introspective and technical undercurrents of Sunrise at the Vortex.

'I Want to Sing Alone':

Iranian Film Wins International Prize Despite Persecution

“Bidad”. Courtesy of KVIFF

by Romina Omidpanah, IranWire

Iranian director Soheil Beiraghi’s film “Bidad” has won the Special Jury Prize at the 59th Karlovy Vary Film Festival in Czech Republic, even as several cast and crew members face prison sentences in Iran for their involvement in the film.

Bidad addresses the prohibition of women’s solo singing voices in Iran. Iranian courts convicted multiple people involved in the production of the film on charges such as “propaganda activities against the system,” “producing vulgar content,” and “encouraging behaviors contrary to public decency through virtual space.”

Beiraghi himself was sentenced to four years and three months in prison, a verdict he announced on Instagram with the comment, “For not reproducing lies, that’s all.”

The film was added to the Karlovy Vary competition lineup shortly before the festival began, in an effort to protect the safety of its creators.

Among those facing legal consequences are prominent actors Amir Jadidi, Leily Rashidi, and Servin Zabtian, as well as crew members including Beiraghi’s wife, Roksana Nikpour.

At the center of Bidad is Seti, a young woman whose bold declaration reverberates throughout the film.

“I want to sing alone, just that,” she says, responding to a music teacher who insists that women’s voices must remain beneath men’s - a reflection of Iran’s effective ban on female solo performances in public.

Iran’s repression of artists in ongoing assault on freedom of expression

My Favourite Cake directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha. Photograph: Mohammad Haddadi. Courtesy The Guardian.

by Parvin Ardalan, Researcher on Iran at Freemuse

At the United Nations Palais des Nations in Geneva on 1 July, the Islamic Republic of Iran came before members of the Human Rights Council to defend its human rights record under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), the Council’s mechanism that requires each member state to undergo a peer review of its human rights every 4.5 years.[1] The review had been carried out in January 2025, and the report on the UPR outcome was presented for approval of the Council. In its oral statement, the Islamic Republic of Iran gave an orchestrated display of defiance towards human rights, as it refused to support over half of the 346 recommendations for improvements that had been made by over 100 UN states. It’s worth noting that only 16 recommendations related to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, issues of special concern to Freemuse, of these just three were supported.[2]

The Israeli military attack on Iran and the 12-day war between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran from 13 to 25 June 2025—marked by missile exchanges and intense airstrikes—escalated the longstanding hostility between the two countries from proxy wars to direct war. Iran asserted this aggression threatens its ability to implement human rights obligations under the UPR. This confrontation, which involved large-scale attacks by both sides and resulted in significant casualties and damage, further complicated the situation for freedom of expression and art in Iran. Restricted internet access, bans on citizens taking photos and videos, arrests for these actions, and charges of espionage have narrowed the space for cultural activity. Under the pretext of insecurity and with an emphasis on national security, strict control, a war atmosphere prevailed in the cities, and the judicial system of the Islamic Republic of Iran has intensified the atmosphere of repression in the war atmosphere that has emerged. The law has expanded the definition of espionage and intensified the legal prosecution of individuals, groups, religious and ethnic minorities.

From under the Dining Table

by Amir Ahmadi Arian, London Review of Books

I met the great Iranian novelist Mahmoud Dowlatabadi in 2006. We had the same publisher, and through them he sent me a message inviting me to tea at the Azadi Hotel in northern Tehran. At one point he told me: ‘Everyone says great writers know what to write and how to write. But everybody can figure that out. What matters is knowing where to write from.’

I was too young to get his point. Many of Dowlatabadi’s books are set in his hometown in Khorasan, and I assumed he was championing a sort of primordial loyalty to one’s origins. I didn’t want to be that kind of writer. I longed to be metropolitan and worldly, the kind of eastern writer the West notices and praises. It wasn’t until two decades later, in June 2025, as I watched Israeli jets bomb Tehran with impunity, that I understood what he meant.

In the early hours of the attack I called to check on my friends and family in Tehran. I asked them where they hide when they hear the explosions and the planes. Nowhere, they said. There was no public shelter, no bunker, nowhere to go.

‘You’re going to have to do the dining table thing again,’ I told my father. He didn’t find that funny.

I grew up in Ahvaz, in southern Iran, during the war with Iraq. A few years ago, as I was researching a novel set during the early days of the war, I found (online) a newsreel about a blackout in Ahvaz. It reminded me of my mother waking me up in the middle of a sweltering summer night to give me a cold shower with my clothes still on, then putting me back to bed so I could sleep a few more hours through the heat. It ended with a footage of people crammed into bunkers and under stairs, which reminded me of the basement of our house, its ceiling so low an adult couldn’t stand upright, the room bare except for a picnic stove that we’d huddle round as we took shelter from air raids.

A Land Made of Mirrors and Stone:

 A literary response to the incursion on Iran

by Ezz Monem. Courtesy Arena Online

by Somayeh Falsafi, Arena Online

When Israeli missiles rained down on Iranian soil, many of in the Iranian diaspora froze, not only in fear, but in recognition. We had seen this story before: skies lit up with war, silence from allies, and a region forced to choose between repression at home or destruction from abroad.

I’ve lived half my life in Australia, and the other half between several countries, including Iran. Iran, where I was born, a place that, like Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, is now living under the shadow of aggression, facing the unfolding plans of a so-called “New Middle East.”

For those who have known Iranians or heard them speak of their home, Iran is not just a name on a map. When Iranians talk about their country, they don’t just place a finger over geography. They usually describe their homeland in descriptive detail, pointing to the Caspian Sea, to the green forests and jagged mountains where you can ski and climb, or to the southern islands in the Persian Gulf, where dolphins dance in turquoise water, or to the deserts with their copper skies and wind-sculpted silence.

But often, they’ll tell you what Iran means to them. And their tone changes.

They’ll speak of the light-catching beauty of muqarnas, those intricate, honeycombed domes and ceilings in houses, palaces, mosques, synagogues, and churches, and fire temples, like in Isfahan, Tehran, or Yazd, built from wood, mirror, and tile. They’ll describe the mirrorwork, where thousands of broken shards are placed in impossible precision. It’s as if the very ceilings are made of shattered history, reassembled into something stronger, something that refuses to disappear.