Home Visit: Maryam Keyhani

Stepping into Maryam’s apartment feels like entering a labyrinth of childhood memories, with every interlaced room revealing a new dream world. Guiding me through each corner of the apartment, is a 5’2 foot reaching figure covered in voluminous fabrics and topped with her signature hat. It seems as if the apartment is a creation purely out of Keyhani’s mind, interplaying with her and her identity, as she perfectly blends into her surroundings. 

But with the colourful, quirky decoration also comes the underlying feeling that there is more behind it. “My intention is to try to deal with trauma and very heavy things through my paintings with lightness because for me, this is a way of survival. Play helps me to deal with pain.” When I asked her where this coping mechanism derives from, she answers that it is deeply rooted in her own childhood. “I was an only child and had a difficult time growing up. So I created this world as a safety knit and it still is where I escape. Sometimes it’s a gift among this chaos not to grow up.”

With this chaos it is clear that she means the current political and societal movement in Iran. Maryam was born in Iran, then lived in Toronto and Paris, but the mother of two never wanted to do Iranian art initially. She explains, “For a long time I tried to stay away from using super culturally charged motives like calligraphy because I just wanted to make art as a woman, not necessarily and solely as an Iranian woman. When I went to art school, I felt like it was expected from an Iranian artist to use typical text based concepts. I tried to distance myself from that the past 20 years in hopes that I would just make art as a woman who happens to be Iranian.” This thought and wish to be seen resonates with so many marginalised minorities in the western world, who want to create something without always taking the place for being different but simply good in what they do.

But after the murder of Mahsa Amini followed by the still ongoing women rights revolution in Iran and execution of protesters, Maryam started to do Iranian art only. When I asked her about the change of heart she replied, “Everything is political now. Being a woman, a mother, an artist is so hard and tiring these days because everything feels like a weight on my soul. It was almost inevitable not to go there which in a way was nice for me because I don’t have to overthink the context in which way I’m using Farsi anymore. I feel like I am doing Iranian art now without feeling like I am using my Iranian roots to be an artist. In the end, the most important of it all is just to get the message Women, Life, Freedom across.” 

Even by using Farsi to create paintings of women, replacing their hair with calligraphy, it all essentially seems to be Maryam and who she is as an artist. “Farsi writing itself is so feminine, its shape has its own little life. Everything I do these days, the paintings or the political drawings, it all comes from a place of feeling helpless. Making it seem playful has always been such an incredible tool to deal with difficult things and I try to keep it that way. Can you imagine if we also need to deal with art taking itself so seriously at these times?” The artist throws this question into the room as it becomes progressively clearer that with every darkness, also comes light.

“The pain we’re feeling is collective, I don’t know whether it is ancestral trauma, but when your people are hurting, you are also hurting. One then realises that this is kind of comforting because humans come through as dark and heavy this world is, there is this avenue of hope that we can still be in favour of something good. What is happening now is a collective human movement, the women in Iran and their courage is giving strength to the rest of us.”

The movement in Iran reached international heights through sharing content and information on the internet, mostly due to Iranian teens. With the internet connecting everyone, it became an important tool to spread news and a way to stop feeling helpless from afar by having the chance to raise your voice. And with creating Iranian art, Maryam also started to use her social media to speak up.

“I would have never imagined that posting about all this stuff would make such an impact but it does. Right now, I can’t do much else but to make my work and my platform about this but it think there is a fine line between posting about Iran and still wanting to bring joy and lightheartedness into the world. I think my job also is to lift people up even if it feels so irrelevant and maybe almost offensive, but people also need that right now. It is all so complex right now, I wake up in the morning seeing pictures of children being shot and trying to handle it all is so overwhelming but I think it is most importantly about the intention. With everything I am doing and before posting something, you have to keep this big sense of empathy, always asking myself if it will offend anyone which it always probably will anyway.”

Besides being a painter, Maryam has found her true love in hats; designing dream-like creations with puffed-up silhouettes, an object touching upon the subject of hair. “Where I grew up, you see these aunts with glorious hair, wearing lots of makeup. A culture that really brings joy to femininity and also what I wanted to incorporate in my paintings.” When I asked Maryam if that also translates to her hats, putting a message in something so symbolic during these times, she replies, “the message can translate much better through my drawings, my hats will always remain an otherworldly thing, they are still a commodity of joy.”

It all plays into Maryam’s way of living, when pain is too unbearable, happiness is always needed, even if the mixing of two opposite feelings feels strange at first. Though her deepest wish still remains to not have the darkness at all. “I haven’t painted anything else than political drawings for a while. Someone recently picked up the last painting I did as I used to do before and they were saying ‘Aww, I feel like this is the last painting you did that is this joyful.’ I do also really hope that we can all go back there one day.”