2022
"Weaves of Resistance" is a photographic artwork that memorializes the resilience and fortitude of Iranian women who have suffered for decades under the repressive regime of the Islamic Republic. It features portraits of women who have become enduring symbols of protest and defiance starting with Neda Agha-Soltan, the young philosophy student whose murder during the 2009 Green Movement demonstration was captured on video for the world to see. Alongside Neda are the faces of women (Nika Shakarami, Sarina Esmailzadeh and Minoo Majidi through her daughter, Roya Piraei) whose lives were taken or irrevocably altered during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, a movement that erupted in the wake of the death of Mahsa Amini following her arrest by the “morality” police for not being veiled enough. What started as a protest against the oppression of women grew to include wider demands for overall freedom for all.
The women portrayed in "Weaves of Resistance" were featured in publicly available coloured photographs. The artist had them printed in black and white to strip the images of temporal cues, giving the piece a timeless, memorial quality. She then cut them into strips and symbolically wove them together to create a new mosaic-like image. This act of weaving suggests that no single story stands alone, each woman’s life is inextricably linked to others in a tapestry of struggle and resistance. The seeming distortion reflects both the fragmentation of truth under authoritarian regimes and the challenge of transmission. But in its very construction, "Weaves of Resistance" resists erasure. Though harder to decipher at first glance, the new fractured composite portrait offers a richer, more layered narrative on collective history and memory.
Ultimately, "Weaves of Resistance" is not just an artwork—it is an act of defiance and remembrance, a visual testament to the strength, courage, and enduring spirit of Iranian women, and in fact oppressed women around the world, who fight against repression and injustice.