The Echo of a Revolution: Voices of Protest in Iran

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Image courtesy of the CCCB.

Renowned artists and scholars discuss the importance of protest art in Iran's contemporary history, from the months leading up to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 to the present day.

In 1978, as part of the protests against the leadership of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a group of professors and students from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran (the so-called Group 57) set up a public workshop dedicated to the creation and exhibition of art in support of the revolution. Posters protesting against the Shah, imperialism, US domination, violence and lack of political freedoms at the time were being created in the Group 57 workshop, in a cooperative dynamic between artists and street protesters, united in the creative process of an imaginary change for a better future. This freedom call, however, was soon drowned out by the establishment of an Islamic theocratic republic that has endured to this day. In 2022, protests triggered by demands for more rights and freedoms in an increasingly oppressive regime led to the international women's rights movement Woman, Life, Freedom.

In a protest framework, visual culture not only facilitates communication between protesters or dissidents: it also determines the way in which the struggle comes to life, is staged, and is carried out. What links exist in the visual language of protest art in Iran and in that of other protests globally? What has been and what is the role of women in the demands of the Group 57 and in contemporary ones?

Co-organized with the Revolutionary Art research group at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Chicago, funded by the Provost’s Discovery Award from Johns Hopkins University, this seminar will discuss these questions, offering a historical and critical perspective that will parallel the art of Group 57 with that of other international revolutionary movements and contemporary feminist demands today.

Event will be held in English.

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