Rouzbeh Kamali

Iranian-British artist, poet and writer, living in London.

فارسی

Face to Face, Strand by Strand

Digital paintings, 2023–2026, shown as a solo exhibition at OPEN Ealing Arts Centre, January 2026. The title echoes a poem commonly attributed to Táhirih Qurrat al-Ayn, remembered for her public unveiling and her execution in 1852. Shaped by the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement: politicised bodies, hair released from compulsory hijab, and the street as a space for voices.

Yellowed Too Soon

An Archaeology of the Present. Digital paintings and works on paper, 2026, shown at the Ealing Art Trail open studio, September 2026. The series grew from Contact Sheet, a digital painting modelled on a photographer’s contact sheet: dozens of small faces from the protests and the January 2026 massacre in Iran, already yellowed as if decades old. Amid two wars and renewed repression, those events were forgotten within months. As a photographer once chose frames from a contact sheet to print, I ‘develop’ faces from mine, pulling them back from forgetting. Some are the bodies that families had to search for and identify; others carry traditional motifs, as if dug up centuries later from a buried site.