This exhibition emerges from love for Iran and from the urgency of witnessing its present history. As an Iranian woman living in exile, Mahsa Attaran’s practice is shaped by ongoing state violence, gendered oppression, and the massacre of civilians, nearly 50,000 people, during the ongoing revolution. Her work responds to this moment as both testimony and refusal of silence.

Working as an Iranian woman in exile, Attaran moves across photography, video, language, and handmade forms, centering women’s lives, domestic spaces, and forms of care as sites of political meaning. Her practice critiques violence enabled and normalized by patriarchal power structures, religious authoritarianism, and the laws of an extreme Islamist regime, while honoring the resilience of Iranian women, men, and children living under these conditions.

Attaran’s work asks viewers—particularly Western audiences—to confront the lived experience of life under state-enforced Sharia law, where rights are understood yet systematically denied. Rejecting ideological narratives, her practice centers the pursuit of dignity, safety, and self-determination amid ongoing political violence.

Rooted in devotion to her homeland and its people, Attaran’s critique arises from love. Through her practice, she asks viewers to witness, to sit with discomfort, and to recognize this violence as it continues to unfold.

Mahsa Attaran is an Iranian-born visual artist, photographer, and educator whose work explores culture, gender, and belonging through memory, exile, and domestic archives. Working across photography, video, installation, and conceptual wearables, she often uses the archive to preserve and reframe women’s histories. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Iranian Artists Forum, Iranian Art Museum, Windsor Art Center, and Hartford Theatreworks, and has been featured in Hyperallergic.

As an Iranian woman in exile, Attaran is committed to witnessing and refusing silence in the face of political violence and human rights abuses. She also leads workshops and talks that encourage critical engagement with social justice, memory, and responsibility.

Attaran holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Connecticut and teaches on the Visual Arts faculty at The Loomis Chaffee School

https://mahsaattaran.com/