Parastou Forouhar

Her response to the horrors of our times gives her work purpose and energy. . . . In her depiction of everyday mental and physical brutality, she creates images of aesthetic appeal but disturbing ambiguity.--Lutz Becker

The Iranian artist Parastou Forouhar expresses her reaction to the perplexing situations in her homeland through a wide variety of techniques, from photography to digital drawings and multi-media installations.

This publication presents a selection of her most startling work so far, created in response to the dramatic social and political upheaval that she experienced after the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the murder of her parents in Tehran.

Though the inspiration behind Forouhar's subject matter may be tragic, her work has a great emotional range: the results are sometimes macabre, occasionally darkly humorous, and often purely joyful.

Parastou Forouhar was born in 1962 in Tehran, and since 1991 has lived and worked in Germany. She received her BA in art from the University of Tehran (1990) and her MA from the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach am Main, Germany (1994).

Rose Issa is a curator and writer who has championed visual art and film from the Arab world and Iran for nearly thirty years. Her gallery Rose Issa Projects showcases the best in upcoming and established artists from the Arab world and Iran.