This painting by Arghavan Khosravi depicts a woman rising over the top of a mosque. The woman’s eyes are closed and her lips are sewn shut. On one end, the thread binding her mouth also runs through her ears, is tied to the architecture of the mosque, and then is tied to a skeleton key. On the other end, the thread is connected to an iron ball, which is then connected to additional threads running into each of the windows in the building, where blindfolded women are imprisoned. Atop one of the windows flies a white flag of surrender. In the courtyard of the mosque, a willow tree is burning. Inside the mosque, behind the iron ball, red lines are visible. For Khosravi, these red lines are symbolic of the restrictions that are imposed on people by autocratic systems. These red lines first appeared in past bodies of Khosravi’s work, and have gradually metamorphosed into the black lines she now mobilizes to indicate chains, bindings, and prison bars.

The image of the mosque is based upon a historic Persian miniature painting. As would be typical of the style of those paintings, the perspective of the image is completely flattened, with every element shown at the same depth and the same scale. Typically, women were portrayed in Persian miniature paintings as subservient or secondary, lacking agency and social significance. The value system transmitted by that ancient iconography continues to shape Iranian gender politics today.

Khosravi subverts the flatness of Persian miniatures in her work, extending the image into three-dimensional space. By literally and symbolically tying contemporary women in post-revolutionary Iran to the aesthetic and cultural traditions of the ancient past, she is examining how values are transmitted and fostered through visual art, and literally broadening the narrative to create new spaces that welcome fresh points of view.