Like blue

Women, angels, and minstrels are familiar and captivating images of the concept of beauty in the world of Iranian art, having drawn the attention of contemporary painters for decades. For this reason, the paintings in this series, at first glance, bear signs of continuity and the extension of the existing visual language found in Qajar-era engravings and woodblock prints, transformed into contemporary visual propositions in an icon-like form.

However, the painter’s concern here is not merely the representation of the female image within a historical context. Roja Alinejad seeks to reflect her lived experience as a woman artist—through arriving at a distinctive visual language and an aesthetic perspective—in confronting the contradiction between the condition of women and contemporaneity in the here and now.

The artist uses her self-portrait and the face of her daughter as the basis of these works, directly inviting us to experience and observe a vibrant world filled with feminine joys, yet shaped by the hardships of its time. Her message is explicit, and the result is a series of images in praise of life.