O-1 Visas
How to resist a brutal dictatorship that denies women the right to live freely? Mamak Razmgir, an artist from Tehran currently living in Lubbock, Texas, offers many possible answers in “Dancing in Tehran’s Streets,” a 10-foot-long wall drawing electrified with possibility and dripping in bloodshed. The titular dancers are Iranian feminist protesters, drawn inky black and larger-than-life, dressed in jeans and sunglasses, their long dark hair blowing, their hijabs torn off and waving at the end of raised arms. In between them is everything else, overwhelmingly intertwined: paper sketches of mythological birds, maimed female bodies, gas masks and carnival masks, a phalanx of ghostly chadors. An anatomically detailed heart spreads its arteries far and wide. An actual tree branch is affixed to the wall, tangled with black veils. A lioness appears, bearing a sword, symbol of the Iranian opposition. A second lion gores a bull, who bleeds out inky black blood onto the floor. Three small lattice windows, called mashrabiya, decorate the scene, as they do on the streets of Iran, where all of this has been happening since long before Mahsa Amini was arrested and killed by the morality police in September 2022, for failing to wear her hijab properly, and where it all continues still.
—Lori Waxman 2025-08-06 5:39 PM