“to arrive is never to arrive”

Skyline’s art gallery explores themes of displacement and reclamation

Guest artists present ‘to arrive is never to arrive,’ an exhibition examining immigration and identity through art

Woven pillar by artist Sanaz Safanasab showing intricate details and weaves in the form of an eye hiding within the cloth. Courtesy The Skyline View.

Aileen Bucog, The Skyline View

The Skyline College Art Gallery held the opening reception for its latest exhibition, “to arrive is never to arrive,” on Feb. 7 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Art by Javier Roberto Carlos, Lorena Molina, and Sanaz Safanasab cohesively explores themes of political rupture, displacement and reclamation in the context of immigration. 

Art history professor Kathy Zarur runs the art gallery, typically curating exhibitions herself; this time, she invited guest curators to put a show together.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to bring in new people,” Zarur said. “People who know the curators and the artists will come and pay closer attention. By bringing in guest curators, we’re highlighting this gallery even more.” 

The opening reception greeted visitors with opening remarks from Zarur and Off Hours — a curatorial collective that spotlights emerging Bay Area artists — who introduced the featured artists.

Zarur’s gallery practicum class and Off Hours installed and curated the exhibition together.

Katherine Jemima Hamilton, Shaelyn Hanes and Ebti — all working and practicing artists — formed the collective in November 2023, after first meeting at California College of the Arts.

“Shaelyn [Hanes] and I were in the curatorial practice program at CCA, which no longer exists. Ebti was in the MFA [masters of fine arts] program,” Hamilton said. “We’ve always curated in other people’s spaces. That gives us a lot of unique challenges, but also opportunities to work with artists in lots of different types of ways.”

Forbidden Music:

Iranian Musicians Push Back Against the Islamic Republic

A Conversation with TarantisT, Justina, and DJ Ali Pink

Issue #74 - The Protest Issue with Kathleen Hanna and Bartees Strange 

Improv session. Tehran, Iran. 2013. Photograph: Jai Brodie. Courtesy Jai Brodie and The Guardian.

by Lily Moayeri, Under The Radar Magazine

Imagine a society where music is forbidden. A society where listening to music is an offense punishable by imprisonment and lashings. Accessing music is only possible through illegal means. Sharing music is a risk you take with your life. This dystopian-like society is not the stuff of an extreme YA novel, it’s what’s been happening in Iran for the last 47 years, under the dictatorial rule of the Islamic Republic.

It hasn’t always been this way in Iran. An ancient civilization going back to the Persian Empire from 550 B.C., Iran was built on the arts. Persian poets Ferdowsi, Rumi, Hafez, and Khayyam have been translated and read in multiple languages for over 1000 years. Traditional Persian instruments tar (lute), santur (dulcimer), chang (harp), and ney (flute) have been played for centuries.

More recently, prior to the Islamic Republic’s takeover, popular Iranian musicians ruled the airwaves in the country, as did Western artists such as Donnie & Marie. Music stores stocked cassette albums from Europe and the U.S. and did excellent business. Nightclubs, cabarets, and discos featured live entertainment and the hottest tunes, both Western and Iranian. All were packed.

The extreme turnaround after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which bases its constitution, in large part, on the most fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia law, that is the religious law of Islam as commanded by God, came down particularly hard on music. Initially, all music was banned, but Iranians’ love of music, and the need for it, couldn’t be denied.

Iranian Artists Keep the Spirit of “Woman, Life, Freedom” Alive

Over three years after the suspicious death of Jina Mahsa Amini sparked a nationwide protest movement in Iran, artists continue to fuel creative resistance.

A digital illustration by Forouzan Safari echoes the defiant spirit of Iran’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in September 2022. Courtesy Roshi Rouzbehani and In These Times.

Alessandra Bajec, In These Times 

The 2022 ​“Woman, Life, Freedom” protests erupted in Iran following the shocking death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini, in police custody. Like many Iranians in the diaspora, illustrator Roshi Rouzbehani was filled with grief, rage and a profound duty to speak out. She felt compelled to create art that echoed what so many were experiencing, and to share the images online to help bring global attention to her people’s struggle.

“Art became both a personal coping mechanism and a form of activism for me,” Rouzbehani tells In These Times. Now based in the UK, she left Iran in 2011 to seek safety from political pressures.

In the year of the women-led uprising, the Iranian regime’s security forces killed hundreds of protesters and threatened the lives of numerous journalists, and detained, tortured and persecuted thousands more. Artists, musicians and cultural workers in Iran — particularly those involved in protest art and human rights activism — continue to face escalating repression, including arbitrary arrests, jail sentences, concert bans and strict censorship.

“Raised fists, flowing scarves and bold female figures,” Rouzbehani says. ​“All these elements reflect the movement’s core spirit: autonomy, resistance and hope.”

‘Octogone’

 Interview. Chalisée Naamani

Protest, fashion history, training equipment, resistance, children’s toys, the search for identity, and the cultural circulation of images. Chalisée Naamani’s ‘Octogone’ is currently on view at Kunsthalle Wien until 6 April 2026; the exhibition moves fluidly between personal and collective histories; clothing, images, and gestures become carriers of ideology, belonging, and power.

Chalisée Naamani, Who claims love? (Detail), 2025, Exhibition view Palais de Tokyo, 2025. Courtesy Ciaccia Levi, Paris/Mailand and Les Nouveaux Riches. © Bildrecht, Wien 2026. Photo: Aurélien Mole.

Interview by Kristina Deska Nikolić (KDN), Les Nouveaux Riches

The exhibition space of the Kunsthalle Wien feels as if it is framing your works. The built–in structure of the changing room, and lockers with mirrors became stations for your work to lean and hang. How you embraced the space and how the idea and the Zurkhaneh (House of Strength) is visible in the exhibition design.

The exhibition ‘Octogone’ first took place in 2025 at Palais de Tokyo, also titled ‘Octogone’. The exhibition traveled to Vienna and is now on view with new works I did specifically for the show here in Austria. When I was invited to do a show in Palais de Tokyo, the space that was given to me had an octagonal shape, which immediately reminded me of my grandfather, who was a wrestler and a boxing fighter.

The art of resistance:

Iranian photographer Ayna Moazzen on identity and building cultural bridges

Copyright Courtesy of Ayna Moazzen and Euronews.

by Saida Rustamova & Tokunbo Salako, Euronews

Iranian contemporary artist Ayna Moazzen, lives between Italy, Azerbaijan and Gulf countries and seeks to turn her transnational experience into a form of cultural dialogue and resistance against the Tehran regime's deadly crackdown on anti-government protests.

Living and working between Italy, Azerbaijan and the Gulf countries, Iranian contemporary artist Ayna Moazzen sees art as both a cultural bridge and a form of resistance amidst the political and social tensions in her country of origin.

Moazzen, who holds a master's degree in art history, translates her lived experience of movement and memory into visual art. Her art bridges visual traditions from late antiquity to contemporary times.

Although her career is transnational, she says her artistic language remains deeply rooted in Iran. “No matter where I am, Iran is always with me. It shapes my instincts, my symbols and my sensitivity – it’s the emotional language I think in.”

A Bug’s Life

New London exhibition uses architecture to explore the experiences of Iran’s American diaspora

Arash Nassiri’s film installation at London’s Chisenhale Gallery uses an abandoned “Persian Palace” to reflect on the lives of Iranians who have settled in LA and elsewhere in the West

Arash Nassiri’s film, A Bug’s Life, sees its insect protagonist experience disorientation and ambiguity as it journeys through a Los Angeles mansion. Courtesy of Arash Nassiri and The Art Newspaper.

by Cyrus Naji, The Art Newspaper

In Arash Nassiri’s new moving-image commission, an insect puppet drags itself across an empty marble floor, cast in eerie blue evening light. The scene is diffused through an enormous frosted-glass cubicle, refracting and distorting the images.

That sense of distortion pervades the Tehran-born, Berlin-based Nassiri’s first institutional solo exhibition, A Bug’s Life, which opened last weekend at London’s Chisenhale Gallery—and comprises a film set within a sculptural installation. The film follows its insect protagonist on a journey of discovery through a cavernous mansion in Los Angeles, its scenes filled with a sense of disorientation and ambiguity that mirrors the experience of those who are separated from their homeland.

The empty mansion is a “Persian Palace”—a unique mutation of Iranian and French Empire architectural styles that took off in Iran in the heady years of Iran’s oil wealth in the 1960s and 1970s. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, Iranians scattered around Europe and North America; Nassiri himself grew up in Switzerland. Some of the wealthier among them recreated the architectural styles of Tehran in Los Angeles, forming what Nassiri calls “a free-form collage of America and Roman and Greek antiquity”.

Reports of Artists Killed by Iranian Regime Draw Outrage and Grief

Sculptor Mehdi Salahshour and filmmaker Javad Ganji are among the members of Iran’s creative community reportedly killed during anti-government protests.

by Isa Farfan, Hyperallergic

As accounts emerge from Iran's deadly crackdown on dissent this month, reports that government forces have shot and killed artists, including sculptor Mehdi Salahshour and filmmaker Javad Ganji, have added to growing international outrage.

Amid an ongoing state-initiated internet blackout in Iran, reporters and human rights groups are scrambling to account for the number of protesters killed and arrested by the Iranian regime since opposition demonstrations began in December.

According to eyewitness reports, government forces have shot indiscriminately at protesters, killing over 2,400 protesters, estimated by the United States-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. The group also reported that forces arrested 18,137 people as part of the crackdown.

Salahshour, a 50-year-old sculptor and father, and Ganji, a 39-year-old television and film director, were among those massacred, according to the Norway-based Iranian Kurdish Hengaw Organization for Human Rights. Ganji's killing was also confirmed by the Iranian Independent Filmmakers Association (IIFMA), as reported by Deadline.

Iranian Art Communities Respond to Political Unrest

Protestors in Tehran, 2026. Via social media. Courtesy picture alliance/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock and ArtAsiaPacific.

by Aisha Traub Chan, ArtAsiaPacific

Mass antigovernment demonstrations have erupted across Iran over the past two weeks. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), the Iranian authorities’ aggressive clampdown has led to at least 500 deaths and over 10,600 arrests. As the turmoil continues to unfold, Iranian artists are denouncing the Islamic regime’s violence and expressing their support for the protestors.

The rallies, which began in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar on December 28, 2025 over widespread inflation, have grown into the largest wave of civil unrest in the country since 2022, when Mahsa Jina Amini’s death in morality-police custody sparked public outrage. Following the government’s deadly response, officials enacted a nationwide internet blackout on January 8, cutting off domestic communication routes, as well as barricading the population from contact with the rest of the world.

Tehran-based filmmaker Jafar Panahi, whose work is banned in Iran, is among the flood of artists and cultural figures who are using social media to denounce the Iranian government. Panahi’s latest film, It Was Just an Accident (2025)—which explores themes of trauma, political oppression, and the collective struggle for liberation—marks his first creative project since being released from Evin Prison in Tehran three years ago, where he was incarcerated for disseminating anti-state propaganda. He issued a joint statement alongside filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who fled to Germany in 2024 after state authorities sentenced him to eight years in prison as well as flogging. The post reads: “In recent days, following the presence of millions of Iranians in the streets protesting against the Islamic Republic, the government has once again resorted to its most blatant tools of repression.” Further addressing the internet shutdown, they called on international communities to “immediately find ways to facilitate access to vital information in Iran by enabling communication platforms.”

Driving in the Dark

This piece was written before Iran imposed an internet blackout on 8 January.

by Raha Nik-Andish, London Review of Books

Six months ago I thought about buying a car, for reasons not of convenience but of necessity. My income as a freelance university lecturer in Iran barely pays for my daily commute. I thought I could drive at night for the ride‑hailing service Snapp! to cover my living expenses. I had enough savings to buy a hatchback Saipa Quik – but then its price went up 66 per cent.

I wasn’t able to buy a car but I have started driving for Snapp! anyway. One‑third of my earnings goes to the car’s owner, Snapp! takes a commission and I pay for wear and tear on the car as well as fuel.

One night I picked up a pair of estate agents. ‘Is working with Snapp! profitable?’ one of them asked. ‘Everyone seems to be doing it.’

I said I was just starting.

‘What this government has done to Iran’s economy,’ he replied, ‘no enemy could have accomplished. They frighten the people. So money goes into gold and coins. Then inflation rises and the gold is dumped back into the market. It’s a dirty economic game to empty people’s pockets.’

I asked about the housing market. ‘It’s not about having money,’ he said. ‘It’s about instability. Nobody dares to sell or buy. Prices can shift so fast that you might not even be able to buy back your own home.’ I have heard similar sentiments from shopkeepers, office workers and government employees.

“Tahmina”—a story from Iran

In this short story translated from Persian, an ordinary day swiftly — and brutally — changes course, with lasting implications.

Amir Fallah, “For Those Who Fear Tomorrow, acrylic on canvas, 2022. Courtesy Artist and The Markaz Review.

by Abdollah Nazari, Translated from Persian by Salar Abdoh, The Markaz Review

She lingered at the threshold of the entrance to the building, uneasily shifting the groceries in one hand while holding onto the sleeping child with the other. Another half step inside and she could hear tentative steps behind her. She turned. Her daughter, in school uniform, was gazing at her with a fearful look that Tahmina hadn’t time just then to question.

“Hurry,” she called to the girl. “Come take your little brother off my hands.” She loosened the tight hold she had on her chador so she could hand over the boy.

Masume managed a weak salaam before taking the boy from her mother. “Maman,” she mumbled meekly.

But Tahmina was already hurrying down the hallway. Everything in her body ached today. The groceries seemed to double in weight the closer she got to the apartment. But then something in what she’d noticed in her daughter’s face made her slow down. She hesitated and turned, “Where’s your brother? Where’s Alireza?”

The girl uttered another “Maman,” and then burst into tears. “Alireza didn’t come for me after his school. They say he went to fight the big boys in fifth grade.”

Tahmina set the groceries down. Her back was throbbing. The outside light of December leaking into the building was weak and made the hallway feel more claustrophobic than ever.