Artist Talk with Anna Kavehmehr

Saturday June 3rd, 2023
2:00pm to 4:00pm

“Woman Life Freedom” Exhibition
May 25th – July 5th, 2023
Riverdale Gallery, 1st Floor

Gallery exhibition supported by a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

​Anna Kavehmehr is an Iranian-Canadian Artist and Illustratorbased in Toronto. She moved to Canada 10 years ago in hopes of pursuing a career in art. Growing up in Iran as a teenage girl and later on as a woman, she never experienced freedom of speech, freedom to create art or to present herself how she wanted. Art became the outlet for Anna to do this and express the inner voices in her that weren’t allowed to be seen.

After the death of Mahsa Jina Amini and the start of the Woman, Life, Movement in September of 2022 in Iran, Anna started creating protest art in support of the movement and to raise awareness on the situation in Iran. The protests soon turned into an anti-government movement which was lead by girls and women in Iran, taking off or burning their mandatory veils and going to the streets, riding bikes, dancing in public and speaking truth to power, along with other civil disobedience acts.

The movement has been described as the first ever female-led movement in the world, and soon after got the support of the women in Afghanistan and all over the world.

This series of works highlights major events during the movements, the lives that were lost and portraits of political prisoners that are still fighting for freedom.

Pictured: Anna Kavehmehr, Zan, digital painting, 2023.