Sepideh Moafi brought the Iranian women’s rebellion to this year’s Golden Globe Awards in a long sequined black dress adorned with a blooming red flower on her right hip. black bird The actress donned the gown in honor of the people of Iran who are risking their lives to fight for freedom and the end of the country’s theocracy.
For those of you who don’t know, the story behind the dress is a collaboration between two Iranian-American designers and artists. Amir Taghi for the silhouettes and Milad Ahmadi for the floral calligraphy.
Milad is a 26-year-old Iranian multidisciplinary artist living in New York City. Frequent collaborators of Amir Taghi, they hand-painted vinyl red poppy flowers to commemorate the lives lost since the death of Masa (Jina) Amini after his arrest by the moral police. is chronologically spiraled over the petals, with the names of four youths executed by the Islamic Republic after spurious trials prominently on the front four petals.
“I wish I didn’t have to write these names down,” Milad wrote in an Instagram post after Moafi’s appearance at the Golden Globes. Victims were “artists, journalists, musicians, teachers, students, chefs, bloggers, designers, doctors, children, teenagers, brothers, sisters, friends, mothers, fathers… real people.”
Over the past four months, protest art has fueled Iran’s women’s struggle for freedom and the government’s brutal crackdown on the cultural spotlight. In New York, artists organized a “die-in” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a protest at the Guggenheim Museum, and an event called “Balayeh Azadi: An Evening of Resistance Through Art” at Chelsea Market Makers Studio. .
In December, at a charity arts event co-hosted by Moafi, Baraye Azadi, which means “For Freedom,” Milad painted for an audience during a reading of Iranian poetry. “I wanted this painting to be a symbol of hope,” they said. “The hope factor is integral to my work. It’s what we are all about.”
Wide, caressing brushstrokes fill a human-sized canvas of a mother embracing her child with a rose. The figure of the mother symbolizes “Mother Iran” and the red, white and green colors represent the flag of Iran. “Protest art means everything to me. I support,” Milad said. An artist and designer, he describes their work as “fashion-adjacent,” using his fine art skills to create pieces and print them on both casual and formal attire.
In 2022, she and actress Nazanin Boniadi designed the artwork for the Freedom dress as part of Amir Taghi’s limited collection. The print, they said, “flows from a dark background into this glimmer of hope that runs through it. Bright, golden.” The dress was specifically worn by Empress Farah Pahlavi, widow of Iran’s last Shah, and actress Olivia Colman, with the proceeds donated to human rights organizations.
In the coming weeks, Milad will create artwork to be printed on crewnecks and t-shirts depicting a “young woman trampling on the patriarchy” as part of Azadi Co.’s latest collection. After taking part in weeks of protests in New York, Azadi Co. co-founder Helen Kamali said people were wearing homemade shirts with the Sharpie slogan on them and soon after they were wearing regular clothes. I noticed that you changed into She believed that if protesters continued to show their support for the feminist movement through apparel, people could become “walking billboards for the movement” and expand its reach.
The clothing line’s slogan is “Streetwear for Freedom,” with the brand’s political message advocating for the feminist movement and U.S.-based, Iran-focused non-profit organizations such as the Abdullaman Boromand Center for Human Rights. refers to its mission to direct revenue to In Iran and the Iranian Democratic Council.
Azadi Co.’s collection of eight protest designs depict powerful Iranian women, celebrate Iran’s multicultural society, and condemn the Islamic Republic.
The “Be A Voice” print is a montage of photographs of young protesters murdered in Iran and snapshots of women protesting for their rights. Multidisciplinary Visual Her artist, Nilou Kazemzadeh, originally produced the designs as poster art in the early days of the protests.
For Kazemzadeh, protest art is essential because it “transcends cultural, social and political structures” and allows members outside the community to “see the pain we felt and our hopes for the future.” In the United States, these visuals connect the public to seemingly distant news stories of egregious human rights violations in Iran.Protest art depicts Iranian women as mobilizers and agents of the resistance. This is a perspective that decades of institutionalized stereotypes and US-Iran tensions have obscured.
For many Iranian artists, especially those in exile or living outside their home country, the power of art goes beyond raising awareness. “It’s revolutionary. It makes you imagine the possibilities,” he says Milad. Iran’s future is unknown, but protest art paints a revolutionary vision.
