Arghavan Khosravi

Arghavan Khosravi (b.1984 in Tehran, IR)

Khosravi earned an MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design after completing the studio art program at Brandeis University. Khosravi previously earned a BFA in Graphic Design from Tehran Azad University and an MFA in Illustration from the University of Tehran. The artist has had recent exhibitions at prominent venues such as the Orlando Museum of Art, FL; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Yinchuan, China; Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI; and Provincetown Art Association and Museum, MA; among others. Khosravi has held residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA; the Studios at MassMoCA, North Adams, MA; Monson Arts, Monson, ME; and Residency Unlimited, Brooklyn, NY. She is a 2019 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Painters & Sculptors Grant and a 2017-18 recipient of the Walter Feldman Fellowship. Her work can be found in the collections of the Newport Art Museum and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

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Khosravi’s practice is intrinsically linked to personal life experiences, yet opens a space to recast memories and process paradoxes of Khosravi’s childhood in Tehran, and grounds the perspective as an Iranian now living in the US. The paintings describe the double life she led throughout her childhood and teenage years, adhering to Islamic Law in public, while still being able to think and act freely in private. Khosravi’s paintings weave multilingual narratives, combining traditional Islamic motifs with surrealist and contemporary visual elements. This blending of Eastern and Western imagery, past and present, religious and secular, reality and fantasy, is symbolic of the tensions the artist faces as an Iranian woman born under ideological autocracy.