About

Forough Haghani (b. 1983, Isfahan) is a self-taught artist who lives and works in Rasht, near Iran’s Caspian coast. In 2016, pregnant with her daughter, she began to embroider.

In autumn 2021 she picked up her daughter’s pencil and drew a stream of frightened, angry and grieving faces. Oil pastel on cardboard, scratched with her fingernails, followed, and then thread and fabric: quilted heads, velvet creatures, large hanging figures and, most recently, textile saplings, roots and nests.

Her work explores femininity, motherhood and growth with a psychoanalytic eye. In 2026 she presented her first solo exhibition, Forough, at Aknoon Art Gallery in Isfahan.

Statement

“Our pains are as old as history; they have worn us out. One must cast a light on the inner darkness, so that pain may reveal what it had hidden. May we live.”

From Forough’s own poem. Her name means “light.”

My work begins with the face, the place where what has been pushed down returns to the surface. The first faces had wide, frightened eyes and skin crossed by many lines, as if a face were worth as much as the scars it carries. Later the lines became scratches in oil pastel, and then stitches.

Thread lets me describe and repair at the same time: every head, figure or plant I sew holds a wound and a gesture of care. My subjects are femininity, motherhood and growth. My materials stay close to the body: fabric, batting, beads, wire, a child’s drawing.

Timeline

2016: First embroideries, during pregnancy
2021: Begins drawing faces in pencil, technical pen and coloured pencil; first fabric faces in 2022
2023: Large faces in oil pastel on cardboard, up to 100 × 70 cm
2024: Thread and fabric; soft figures; works in the landscape; Drawing Dolls begins
2025: Textile plants: saplings, flowers, roots and nests
2026: Ceramic masks; first solo exhibition, Forough, Isfahan