Arghavan Khosravi, You’re Free to Fly, 2021; Hand-Embellished, Signed and Numbered Limited Edition Print

Arghavan Khosravi is known for mixed media paintings that intimately center the female perspective. Memories of her coming-of-age in Tehran—a metropolitan hub where liberal values and theocratic governance collide—manifest in the artist’s blending of styles and reference points. Equal parts real and surreal, Khosravi’s works place traditional Persian literary, architectural and decorative motifs in dialogue with objects such as Greco-Roman sculptural forms and contemporary articles of clothing, as a way of conveying ambiguous narratives that cross time and place. These juxtapositions form visual frames around women subjects whose poses and gazes suggest an emotionally charged yearning for agency.

You’re Free to Fly features a blindfolded woman whose face and body tilt up towards three birds whose feet, in spite of the work’s title, are bound by red strings that trace back to a classical male statue. A recurring symbol throughout the artist’s practice, the strings represent the myriad ways that women are restricted by patriarchy throughout the world. She notes, “My work is a vehicle for shifting power, validating personal storytelling, and connecting to universal messages about human rights.” Khosravi is the recipient of the 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, and is in the permanent collections of the Newport Art Museum and Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

ART FOR CHANGE will donate 20% of the net proceeds of each limited edition print sold to the Center for Human Rights in Iran. This limited series is part of AFC’s Changemakers collaboration with Pari Ehsan.