There Is a Woman on the Wall

There Is a Woman on the Wall

January 9 to March 3, 2023.

Reception: February 8, 4:00-6:00 p.m. 

Curatorial statement

There Is a Woman on the Wall features Iranian Dallas-based artist, Shahrzad Hamzeh, who is currently a Ph.D. student at The University of Texas at Dallas majoring in Visual and Performance studies with a focus on dance.

Hamzeh has a diverse visual and performing practice including Dance, Choreography, Modeling, Acting, photography, and more. Hamzeh’s work is built upon her life experience of living under the homogentisic dictatorship of the Islamic Regime of Iran. She is using her practice to fight human rights violations against women that have been going on for more than 43 years. She gives voice to the Iranian people’s fight for freedom, as well as their attempt to change the regime in charge and its awful laws against women. She states: “What I am expressing here is not only something a woman has to suffer from the individuals in the immediate or extended family, but also at the hands of the government. A recent example of this is what happened to Mahsa Zhina Amini who was killed on September 16th, 2022, when in the custody of the morality Police in Tehran. She was arrested because she was not wearing “proper” Hijab in the eyes of the Police, the representative of the Islamic Dictatorship Regime of Iran.”

Hamzeh offers an intimate experience in which the message dawns on you, gradually you notice the woman under the layers. Once you see the woman, she is the center of your attention, and you cannot unsee her. Hamzeh’s works evokes the idea of censorship, control, and oppression while suggesting resilience and fighting back. “To be a woman is to have different layers of existence. Especially if you live in a society where being “you” is illegal. What I mean by that is literally what you see in my words. As a woman living in the Islamic Republic of Iran, I was never free to express myself in any way a human being should be entitled to express themselves in a free world.”

Hamzeh focuses on oppression towards women in Iran and its effects on their existence and identity. Her usage of self-portrait makes her message more personal yet relatable. “I have tried, through my work, to showcase what this oppression does to a woman. What you see before you, every single work that I have created for this exhibition is an attempt to physically give form to the layers I had to put on myself to maybe be accepted by the Iranian-Islamic society that I was living in.”

There Is a Woman on the Wall is curated by Shahrbanoo Hamzeh, Heartland Community college gallery coordinator.