Arghavan Khosravi to Join König Galerie

Two weeks ago König Galerie announced that Arghavan Khosravi is joining the gallery's artists. The gallery hosted Khosravi's "Truth Be Told" solo show from January 14 to February 20, 2022, to acquaint its audience with her art. She is completely familiar with metaphor and narrative. Many consider her art a bridge between Europe's renaissance and Iran's miniature painting traditions, which, of course, is a truthful judgment. Nonetheless, what distinguishes Khosravi and makes her art brilliant is her mastery of narration and using metaphors. She was born in 1984, grew up in Iran, and immigrated seven years ago. However, her life story is not the life story of Gholam-Hossein Sa'edi, Shahram Rahimian, or even Golshiri. Narratives of the homeland are up-to-date and precise in Khosravi's works; they reveal the artist's lived experience and rely on audacity instead of grief.

Arghavan Khosravi's art is autobiographical and, at the same time, global; a heroine embodied in a western sculpture and carrying a sign of her homeland. These signs are sometimes related to experiences and concerns represented in her paintings as red strings, abstract but familiar references, suspensions, and optical illusions, and they are sometimes depicted more obviously. Reviewing her interview with Global Voices, we understand that the artist narrates what she has experienced; that is why her work is autobiographical. However, in response to Omid Memarian, she has emphasized that this is not only her narrative but many of ours. She has transformed an individual experience into a collective one and crossed the borders of her native geography. Many conceive of her work as related to human rights subjects.

The Global Voice interview is also notable for another aspect. Khosravi admits that she is interested in the particular type of unique Iranian narrative, which is known by the metaphors in her works. Whether writers, sculptors, or painters, Iranian artists are condemned to conceal with modesty; they don't express themselves ambiguously, but to avoid the harm caused by the clarity of their narrative, they take refuge in metaphors. Khosravi has gratefully inherited this background, maybe for different reasons than her predecessors.

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