Soheila Sokhanvari
Born in Iran, the artist Soheila Sokhanvari has lived in the UK since the 70s. Working first as a scientist, according to her family’s wishes, and then retraining as an artist in the 2010s, she became an ‘official’ exile from Iran in 2009. Now based in Cambridge, where she is a studio resident at Wysing Studios, she has her first Her Barbican exhibition, curated by Eleanor Nairne, two years in the planning and her first major institutional show. Called Rebel, Rebel (after the David Bowie song of the same name), it features a series of portraits of female Iranians working in the arts in Pre-Revolutionary Iran - actors, poets, dancers, singers, academics and intellectuals - who were forced into exile or otherwise persecuted after the Revolution in 1979. Based on found photographs, the portraits are both exquisite in their rich, patterned intricacy and profound in the underlying political message they impart. On the eve of the show’s opening, Danielle spoke to Soheila at the Barbican about her thoughts on the protests currently taking place across her country of birth, and how she hopes that, in her words, the show will “transport visitors to the pulse of life in pre-revolutionary Iran and to the women at the heart of that culture… who gave up everything to pursue their creativity.”
