Alireza Shojaian is a Paris based Iranian painter and visual activist.
Early life and education
Shojaian was born in Tehran to a muslim family; he began to draw at an early age. At the age of 16 he was exposed to nude artfor the first time when he saw Velasquez' Venus at her mirror in an art magazine that was obtained in the Iranian black market. Unlike all other bareskinned images and paintings in magazines circulating in Iran, the nude body of Venus was not covered over by censoring black ink. Shojaian's reproduction of Velasquez' work was his first cavas painting. At the age of 23, Shojaian came out as gay to his university professor, who was sympathetic and encouraged him not to censor himself; her intervention enabled Shojaian to explore his sexual identity through his work and to document LGBT persons' experience in Iran. Shojaian obtained his bachelor's degree in fine arts and painting from the Islamic Azad University in 2014. He was not allowed to complete his master's degree for choosing Queer Art as the subject of his thesis and final project. Shojaian kept his work hidden throughout his university years and did not exhibit in Iran.
Travel
The sanctions against Iran prevented Shojaian from moving to the United States and Europe; he met a Lebanese patron in Iran who encouraged him to move to Beirut. Shojaian settled in the more liberal Beirut in February 2017 where he was able to develop his work and held two solo exhibitions in 2017 and 2018. Shojaian was offered an opportunity by the French embassy in Lebanon to participate in a project for the Académie des beaux-arts following which he moved to Paris.
Sociopolitical activism
Shojaian depicts his subjects nude or semi-nude in intimate and vulnerable positions, he states that his work aims to fight societal prejudice against LGBT people while making space for non-heteronormative masculine identities. Shojaian stated sexual identity is politized in a number of countries including Iran where human bodies are censored and controled, and sexual identity is scrutinized and politicized. Shojaian did not feel safe in Iran where uncloseted gay persons suffer from state-sponsored oppression and face execution. While still in the university, Shojaian painted two nude works titled Salad season 1 and 2 where he alludes to self-subjugated genital mutilation as a symbol of not accepting his sexual identity under the oppressive Iranian regime. The paintings were not allowed in public and were veiled for the private viewing of his university professor. The Hexagon Series explore the final moments of one of Shojaian’s friends who was murdered by a Jihadi stranger posing as a sex date. In 2017, after traveling to Lebanon, Shojaian collaborated with Lebanese queer bellydancer and artist Khansa in a series of sensual and controversial nude portraits exhibited in Beirut under the title of Sweet blasphemy. One of Shojaian's better known pieces depicts Mashrou' Leila's frontman Hamed Sinno pinching the nipple of Anubis, the ancient Egyptian god of funerary rites. In the painting, Anubis wears a rainbow colored Usekh collar alluding to the pride flag. The work references and draws inspiration from a painting by an unknown painter, titled Gabrielle d’Estrées et une de ses soeurs, that depicts the mistress of Henry IV of France. The collaboration with Sinno was a statement against systematic state-led persecution of LGBT minorities in Egypt. Shojaian painted the piece after the September 22, 2017 Mashrou' Leila Cairo concert during which the pride flag was flown. The Cairo pride flag incident resulted in the arrest of a number of concert-goers. In a 2020 interview, Shojaian paid tribute to Sarah Hegazi, a LGBT activist and one of the concert attendees who raised the pride flag. Hegazi committed suicide after having experienced traumatic incarceration and mistreatment in Egypt.
