WE COULD BE HEROES… SOHEILA SOKHANVARI

Thu 14 December 2023 - Sun 4 February 2024

The Heong Gallery

When Soheila Sokhanvari (b. 1964, Shiraz, Iran) came to England as a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl in 1978, she could not have imagined that the Iran she left would soon cease to exist. We Could Be Heroes… takes its name from the 1977 song by David Bowie. The song about two lovers separated by the Berlin Wall resonates with Sokhanvari’s relationship with Iran, separated from all she knew by the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Like the lovers reaching across a perilous border in search of each other, Sokhanvari reaches back to Iran before 1979, resurrecting icons and personal memories on the verge of being erased.

We Could Be Heroes… explores multiple facets of Sokhanvari’s art practice through a small selection of her work over the last decade and a half. The oldest works in the exhibition are paintings in Iranian crude oil, a series begun in 2009 that continues to the present. The newest are the latest in her ‘icon’ series of women performers who were silenced by the revolution in 1979. In between are paintings of her parents and others that conjure into being the artist’s memories before her departure for England. A dual British-Iranian national, Sokhanvari took the difficult decision in 2009 to address the Islamic Republic and its atrocities head on in her work, effectively exiling herself from her family and her roots. She documents many such private heroisms in her work, while advocating for women’s rights in Iran and Afghanistan at every opportunity.

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With thanks to Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery.

Cost: Free