Iranian artist Arghavan Khosravi has collaborated with Avant Arte to release a new print edition, dubbed The Earring. Emblematic of her past work, the hybrid print assemblage features a concealed image of a woman, which is unconventionally tied together with a rope that balances a two-dimensional ball and chain.
Born in Iran and now based in Connecticut, Khosravi uses her practice to speak on the systemic censorship and oppression that woman have experienced in her home country since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Each of her multi-layered artworks balance beauty and desperation in a way where she bypasses “perpetuating notions of cultural exoticism and portrayals of Iranian women as victims,” the artist previously noted, and rather, uses her work as “a vehicle for shifting power.”
Recently, Khosravi’s oeuvre has taken added resonance following the ongoing nationwide protests sparked by the death of Jîna ‘Mahsa’ Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who was killed at the hands of the country’s ‘Morality Police’ for not properly wearing her hijab. Since then, Iran’s Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) estimates that at least 530 protestors have been killed by regime forces, while nearly 20,000 more have been arrested.
The Earring is an edition of 25 and will release exclusively via raffle for $4,000 USD on October 23 at 9am ET.
Elsewhere in art, Julie Mehretu comments on erasure and displacement in new White Cube exhibition.
