UNITED KINGDOM: Iranian artist Souren Mousavi who survived imprisonment and abuse in Iran holds exhibition in London

Record ID: 312642

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: Iranian artist Souren Mousavi who survived imprisonment and abuse in Iran holds exhibition in London
  • Date: 6th April 2008
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF PAINTING ENTITLED "LIFE" (2 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 21st April 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: United Kingdom
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz
  • Reuters ID: LVATQK4LU5PMO9STK9LNWIEPY1S
  • Story Text: Iranian artist Souren Mousavi has survived imprisonment and abuse to produce a collection of paintings exploring her experiences which she has exhibited at a gallery in London.
    When artist Souren Mousavi decided to create works of art exploring the female form and psyche in her native Iran, her work was deemed pornographic and offensive by the Iranian authorities. Mousavi says the subjects of her paintings and drawings eventually led to her arrest and imprisonment, an experience which left her traumatised psychologically but creatively empowered.
    Mousavi says that while serving a prison sentence in Iran, she was raped and tortured and that all of her work was confiscated. She says she eventually bribed her way out of prison and escaped to Britain in 2001 using a false passport. After spending seven years in Britain, she became a British citizen last year.
    Her current exhibition, which is being held under the banner of "Art as a unique Freedom," is inspired by her experience and suffering and is composed of work she made over the last seven years she has spent living in Britain.
    "It's difficult to explain all the process, it's just been many years of experience in my life. What's happened from the beginning at childhood and all through the teen-age (years) and then university and now I'm here in Britain in which I found freedom, so I could speak louder with my work and just showing all my experience," says Mousavi, about how living in Britain helped her explore her creativity.
    With her first London exhibition under her belt, Mousavi says she finds it very rewarding to be able to share her work and her life experience with the general public.
    "And now, I have to say it's a celebration of my life somehow to show what I had in the past and to get lots of comments from people," she says.
    Mousavi, who is 39, was born to an Iranian mother and a Bahraini father, with her Persian roots linking her to Iran's former monarchy. She says there were no artists in her family and that she received no encouragement to follow the path she chose. Instead, Mousavi pursued her dream of becoming an artist by studying fine art at the University of Tehran.
    In spite of living far away from Iran, Mousavi says she still feels Iranian and has not lost her connection to her home country.
    Through her paintings, Mousavi maintains an intensity for exploring deep emotions and continues to delve into her interest in women's rights.
    ''I'm trying just to be brave. Trying in a country where a woman doesn't have any rights and now they are trying to have rights but still, we (Iranian women) still have lots of problems to show how you could be someone for your sake or for the world, and for me, it has been very difficult,'' she says.
    One of Mousavi's paintings, entitled ''Untouchable'' is inspired by the artist's experience in prison. Mousavi says she could not talk about the experience so she decided to express it in a painting.
    ''I wasn't able at all to talk to anyone and the only way I could just, to talk, to say what's happening, I have nightmares, I have flashbacks, I have the loss, which I lost, which was me, and I just revealed myself," says Mousavi.
    The exhibition has received more than 200 visitors, with a diverse cross section of people of various backgrounds coming to see her show.
    One visitor to Mousavi's exhibition immediately identified with the artist's empathy for women.
    ''I like the colours and the ideas. She's exploring all sorts of things that deal with women and femininity and such things,'' said gallery visitor Marion Bond.
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