The Victoria and Albert Museum in London acquired Sheida Soleimani's 'Ghostwriter' series for the V&A Photography Collection to commemorate the one year anniversary of the Women, Life, Freedom protests in Iran, sparked by the violent death of Mahsa Jina Amini.
Soleimani explores the personal implications of political systems levelled at the body. Adopting the role of a ghostwriter, Soleimani assumes responsibility of translating her parents’ traumatic experience of political exile and leaving Iran in the 1980s. It is the first time the artist has turned the lens on herself and her family. Weaving together a powerful and tragic tale of exile, displacement, persecution and survival, Soleimani casts her parents, mâmân and bâbâ, as the photograph’s main protagonists, symbolically recounting the memories surrounding each parent’s forcible departure, as Iran began to tighten its response to pro-democracy activists and political dissidence.
Read more about the acquisition here
