Iranian artist Shadi Harouni's exhibition Žena . Život . Svoboda, a body of work created specifically for Artwall Gallery, is a tribute to this ongoing struggle for freedom from oppression. The work speaks the language of protest in public and private spaces. Harouni, whose research and practice is rooted in histories of dissent and revolution in the region, here pulls from her personal and public archives of art and protest, from songs and poetry, slogans and graffiti, low-resolution and distorted images that circulate the internet, from the symbolic and physical presence of bodies that revolt, and the tireless and poetic work of women activists that build.
In five photographs there is the motif of women's hands, extending out of small openings in walls to hold and present signs and artifacts of an uprising: an image of an injured bloodied hand in a moving car on the streets of Iran that holds up two fingers signaling victory; a cinderblock, used by protesters to blockade streets, holds one of thousands of revolutionary slogans covering walls throughout the country; another text connects collective mourning with action and uprising; a hand grips a long braid of hair; another presents a stencil of Dayeh [Mother] Sharifeh — the mother of Kurdish activist Ramin Hossein Panahi who was executed in 2018; and yet another hand holds a photograph of a shop window in Tehran that’s been graffitied with the silhouette of Vida Movahed, who in 2017 stood on an electric box in Revolution Street in Tehran, took off and fastened her headscarf to the end of a stick, in protest against the suppression of women's basic rights. Movahed was arrested and imprisoned. Her image remains a symbol of decades of Iranian women’s bold and unflinching resistance.