Personal experience with collective memory
Farah Ossouli’s works are deeply rooted in Persian visual culture, emphasising illustrated manuscripts, miniature paintings, and classical literature. Drawing inspiration from these sources, she formulated distinct intellectual concerns and translated them into ambiguous symbolic visual forms. Her work is characterised by an eclectic synthesis that merges traditional Iranian motifs with narratives from contemporary history and strategies derived from postmodern composition.
A close examination of the various series she produced reveals a meaningful correspondence between her evolving aesthetic and the historical circumstances in Iran during those decades. In early series such as Passage Through History (1983–85), Reflection of Love (1985), Moments (1988–89), and Life’s Poem (1991–94), Ossouli fused her personal experience of social traumas unfolding around her with the collective memory of the nation to produce archetypal visual narratives. These works, rendered in the aesthetic vocabulary of miniature painting, depict grotesque, exaggerated human figures with positive or negative traits in the rendering of facial or bodily features. Such pictorial strategies testify to her sustained interest in developing character elements, social roles, and the psychological ramifications of daily life in her paintings as experienced by her fellow Iranians. Her representations of violence—often addressed less directly in Iranian visual art at the time—starkly contrast with other prevailing tendencies.
Ossouli’s notion of “direct inspiration” from the miniature tradition presents the genre in crisis. By the age of 40, she had begun depicting miniatures in a radically unorthodox manner, confronting viewers with recent history. This approach, which she termed a “new orientation” allowed a critical reevaluation of formal conventions and created a space for individual testimony within a contemporary visual idiom.
In Moments (1988–1989), she introduced a metaphorical dimension by integrating figures from European iconography—such as Narcissus, Prometheus, and Judith—into her compositions. These characters function not merely as narrative agents but as ironic emblems of alienation, carrying psychological traits akin to those of the artist figure who appears recurrently throughout her oeuvre. Beneath the surface of constructed irony lies a meditation on the artist’s place in a post-revolutionary society that often marginalises aesthetic inquiry in favour of ideological conformity.
Works such as Centaur, Angelic Mother, and Window (all 1992) present unusual narrative configurations within Ossouli’s evolving interpretation of the miniature tradition. Celestial forms hover over abstract grids in these compositions, suggesting a dense, dream-like atmosphere. Some figures are drawn inward, emphasising narrative introspection, while others project outward, implying social engagement. This tension between interiority and exteriority, narrative and abstraction, constitutes a singular visual grammar. The ambiguous cosmology evoked in these works, gestures toward underlying political and existential meanings, situating them within a broader discourse of symbolic resistance.
By enriching the inherited miniature language with autobiographical and political content, Ossouli has retooled it into a potent medium for expressing the complex realities of contemporary Iranian life. Series such as My Stories (1999–2005) and Hafez (2002–2005) explore illusions carefully curated by power structures—a strategy that reflects the broader mechanisms of “control and discipline” employed by the state. Later works, including Seven Arches (2005), Life Story (2009), and Good and Evil (1999), depict suspended lovers through empty, timeless landscapes—allegories for stagnation, lost agency, and the illusion of freedom. Beneath the surface of these seemingly quotidian scenes lies a deep terror, an unspoken violence masked by the ordinary.
Her political engagement has intensified in later series, Burning Wings (2008) and Bird & Cage (2008), created during the Green Movement in Iran (2009) and the Arab Spring (2010). In Wounded Virtue (2009–2014) and Do You Hear the Darkness Blowing? (2014–2016), she began incorporating masterpieces from European art—from Michelangelo to Goya, Monet to Delacroix—into the structural idiom of Persian painting. This juxtaposition of East and West underlined the psychological disintegration and helplessness felt so widely among Iranians since the revolution. Central to this series is a meditation on symbolic, idealised love—reduced, in Ossouli’s telling, to hollow sentiment or objectified fantasy—serving as a metaphor for the mechanisms of repression in totalitarian systems. These themes echo those she first explored in the early 1990s.
Ossouli has developed complex, multi-layered compositions that weave together autobiographical fragments and political critique during this period. Her tragically symbolic yet deceptively simple visual idiom draws heavily from Iranian poetry—particularly the works of Forough Farrokhzad and Ahmad Shamlou—while simultaneously engaging with the visual history of European art. As in earlier periods, the central figures in these works are elegantly dressed women. Yet behind their graceful appearances lies a darker narrative—a visual articulation of sorrow, resistance, and unresolved trauma—mirroring the fractured spirit of the times.
Since the early 2000s, Farah Ossouli’s work has increasingly reflected an evolving engagement with the complexities of female subjectivity. This trajectory has led her to reinterpret the historical relationship between classical Iranian poetry and miniature painting through the lens of contemporary feminist critique. By bridging these traditional aesthetic forms with critical discourses rooted in her own experience, Ossouli has developed a distinctive visual language that articulates the conditions of female existence in post-revolutionary Iran.
A prominent theme in her later work is the loss or fragmentation of identity, most notably explored in her Still Life series (2016–2020). This body of work features male portraits and depictions of disembodied female heads, illuminating the instability of selfhood. Recurring motifs such as face masks and the gradual disintegration or distortion of facial features signal a deep preoccupation with depersonalisation and psychological fragmentation. Ossouli conceals or removes the subject’s head in many compositions by carefully manipulating the pictorial frame. In other instances, she multiplies facial features to unsettling effect or presents figures turned away from the viewer, disrupting the conventional dynamics of spectatorship and subjectivity.
In some recent works, facial features appear blurred or entirely effaced, rendering the figures anonymous and giving them a mannequin-like appearance. These aesthetic strategies evoke a pervasive sense of alienation and emotional detachment, emblematic of melancholic states. Ossouli’s depiction of these depersonalised forms—neither fully human nor wholly symbolic—collapses the boundary between subject and environment, thus conveying the ontological insecurity characteristic of melancholia.
For nearly five decades, Ossouli’s oeuvre has persistently addressed the latent structures and often obscured dynamics of Iranian society. Rather than presenting overt political commentary, her work uses a nuanced visual language, inviting critical reflection. Drawing upon the rich heritage of Persian mythology, classical literature, and poetry, her practice forges a dialogic relationship between past and present, tradition and modernity, surface and subtext. Through this synthesis, Ossouli reclaims historical and artistic forms, transforming them into vehicles for contemporary inquiry.
Collections
Ossouli’s works are in public and private collections, such as the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Peth, the British Museum, London, Devi Foundation, New Delhi, the Farjan Collection, Dubai, Kerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran, LACMA, Ludwig Museum Koblenz, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, Trophenmuseum, Amsterdam, Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Akfhami Foundation, Dubai.
