Abstract
This thesis examines my painting practice as an exploration of memory, political violence, and the lived experiences of Iranian women, investigating how contemporary figurative painting can function as an act of witnessing and the preservation of cultural memory. Situated within feminist discourse and informed by diasporic consciousness, the project draws upon the symbolic language of the pomegranate and the Persian garden as enduring metaphors for femininity, resilience, regeneration, and collective memory. Together, these symbols establish a psychological landscape where domestic space becomes an emotional architecture of care, restriction, intimacy, and resistance. Through figurative oil painting, layered surfaces, spatial compression, and patterns rooted in Persian visual traditions, I construct psychologically charged environments that register the emotional consequences of political realities rather than directly illustrating historical events. Informed by the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and the ongoing struggle for women's bodily autonomy and visibility in Iran, these paintings explore how personal memory becomes inseparable from collective history. At the center of this practice is storytelling as an act of cultural preservation. Throughout Iranian history, stories have carried truths that could not always be publicly recorded, allowing memory to endure despite censorship, displacement, and violence. My paintings continue this tradition by transforming lived experience into visual narratives that honor remembrance over spectacle, creating spaces where grief, tenderness, courage, and hope coexist. Through painting, this thesis argues for the enduring power of visual storytelling to resist erasure and preserve the histories of women whose lives continue to shape our collective memory.