WOMEN, LIFE, FREEDOM

In response to the killing of Mahsa Amini, 2022, I am creating works that represent the power and multi-dimensionality of Iranian women from the lens of a British-Iranian woman of the diaspora -with freedom to express the way women in Iran dream of.

Women, Life, Freedom

This project began in Iran with a self-portrait of me on a white horse at sunrise in response to the Women, Life, Freedom movement -days after the killing of Mahsa Amini. This represents the power of Iranian women and their resilience in freedom-fighting, stepping into the spotlight to protest despite all fatal risks. The white horse represents the innocence of these women, being killed and imprisoned for speaking out and protesting for their rights.

This led to the rest of my ongoing project. Using my resources as an Iranian woman of the diaspora to begin a collection that can exist to represent the beauty and innate strength of women in all their ways of being and expression. This is a homage to the Iranian women in Iran and the diaspora, alongside the multi-cultural women who lovingly cross their paths.

The variety in the collection continually expresses that women cannot be limited to one perception of being. We have no limitations.

So far my collection has touched on:

1. The love carried through sisterhood with other women alongside the sisterhood we hold within ourselves as ever-growing, conscious women who have learnt to show up for their inner children.

2. Embracing our femininity through letting go and expressing through cultural dance. Through this, I have represented the older generations who we have learnt from and the third-culture kids who carry ancestral movements through their bodies and cultural style.

3. The power in our ancestral, natural features. The strength and conviction we hold in our eyes, the power we hold in our generational noses. Paying homage to the simultaneous delicacy and magnetism of embracing ourselves.

4. The strength of womanhood when we stand in power together, side by side and by way of example for one another.

5. Being confident in ourselves as women and honouring the new, revolutionary ways in which we exist through simply being true to ourselves and standing confidently no matter the environment.

This project aims to continue representing women of the Iranian diaspora and neighbouring diasporas to celebrate the beauty of said individuals and communities. This is the representation we have all needed to see growing up. Diaspora women have a yearning to reconnect and sustain connections to their culture and the ways it interlinks with their identity and oppressed women in Iran/the Middle East long to see women represented in all their forms: free, powerful, expressive.

My collection aims to heal the women in our communities and empower them.