The V&A acquired a series of posters produced in support of the Women, Life, Freedom movement through the Rapid Response Collecting programme in late 2023. The eight posters were designed and printed by the Iranian graphic designer, Ghazal Foroutan.
The Women, Life, Freedom movement first erupted in Iran in September 2022 following the violent death of Mahsa Zhina Amini, a young Iranian woman of Kurdish origin, in Tehran. Having been arrested for what was perceived as improper dress, she collapsed in custody having been beaten by the ‘morality police’ during her arrest. She was taken to hospital where she later died from her injuries. Thanks to reporting from two young women journalists, Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, news of Mahsa’s death quickly spread through Iran, and across the world.
Street protests immediately sprung up, first in Kurdistan and Tehran, and then across the country. They called for rights for women, an end to compulsory veiling, and the downfall of the Islamic Republic. In tandem with this outpouring on the ground, Iran’s youth quickly took to social media to spread the message of the protests further. Within this online context, artists and designers quickly took up the mantle and began producing and disseminating art in support of the movement. The originally Kurdish slogan of jin, jiyan, azadi (women, life, freedom) was adopted and translated into Persian: zan, zendegi, azadi.
Having grown up in Iran, Foroutan was following the protest movement closely online. She had moved to the US in 2018 to study and much of her design work was focused on Iranian women and their empowerment. Her earlier series The Persian Shirins had reimagined women portrayed in the distinctive oil on canvas painting produced during the reign of Iran’s Qajar dynasty (1789-1925). Another series imagined possible futures for the women of Iran, presenting them as athletes on the cover of imaginary ‘Woman of Tomorrow’ magazine covers.
Watching the news of the protests coming in from Iran and seeing other artists begin to respond the movement, Foroutan knew she had to contribute something. Aware that her audience would largely be within the US, she wanted to create an image which would be instantly recognised and understood. She explained how she chose and adapted the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter to fit her new purpose. Foroutan’s Rosie has pulled off her headscarf and brandishes it in her fist. She’s got the heavy eyebrows, so distinctive of Iranian women now and down the centuries. The rest of her face is anonymous, covered by a mask. Of course, the face mask is the one we all became accustomed to wearing during the pandemic but it was also used by women and men protesting on the streets of Iran to protect their identities. She has her sleeve rolled up ready for work, revealing a bicep tattoo underneath. In Persian, it reads ‘no to compulsory hijab’.
The posters were printed in eye-catching colour-ways on a risograph printer, allowing a high volume of posters to be made as quickly as possible, but it was the online presence of the poster which had the biggest impact. When Foroutan posted the image on Instagram, she was inundated with requests for the file so that the poster could be printed and used at protest rallies across North America and Europe. Providing a link to the file online, it was freely available to download, print and use anywhere in the world. The poster could be spotted on a placard at a huge rally in support of the movement in London’s Trafalgar Square. The file also went on to be distributed through a number of platforms for sharing protest material and design, such as the online open access archive of the Iranian Women of Graphic Design on Google Drive. Due to the role which the digital file in PDF form played in the use of this poster, the museum has acquired the digital file as well as the posters printed on paper.
The V&A is home to one of the largest and most significant collections of objects from Iran, including masterpieces such as the Ardabil Carpet. From fragments of ancient monuments and 16th-century carpets to contemporary photography, the collections represent a great span of Iran’s history from the rule of the Achaemenid dynasty (550-330BC) to the current Islamic Republic (1979-). The addition of these posters to the museum’s permanent collection recognises the significance of the Women, Life, Freedom movement as a moment in Iran’s modern history. In addition to these posters, the museum recently made a second acquisition related to the movement: Mahsa by Iranian-American photographer Sheida Soleimani.
The Women, Life, Freedom posters can be seen on display in gallery 74, Design 1900 – Now.
