Soheila Sokhanvari in conversation with Jacqui McIntosh

The talk will centre on Soheila’s crude oil series of drawings and the importance of that medium to her, as well as examining her broader practice.

Soheila Sokhanvari (b.1964) is a British Iranian artist whose expansive, multimedia practice engages with the experience of women in Iran and the injustices faced since the 1979 Iranian revolution. The process of drawing is, for Sokhanvari, a metaphor for the loss of memory. In 1978, as a young teenager, she left Iran to be educated in England. After the revolution, she suddenly became an exile from her homeland, losing access to everyone that she loved, her language and culture. Her works play with meaning and materiality, often allowing the medium to carry the political message. In her ongoing series of drawings, Sokhanvari employs crude oil to tell the story of the individual in relation to mass consumerist society and an energy-hungry world – where oil rich countries negotiate and battle for democracy and liberty but at a human cost.

The Time of Our Lives focuses on the pioneering drawing practices of women artists and their impact on feminist activism from the 1980s until today. The exhibition showcases the work of key artists, examining drawing’s versatility as a medium and the ways it has been used by women to raise consciousness around social and political issues, such as reproductive justice, sexism, racism and other forms of oppression.