̽��ֱ��

Thirty Years Of Solitude features the work of 30 photographers and seven film directors, all of them women living and working in Iran. It will open at New Hall, a women's college at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, on February 16 and a media viewing will take place that evening.

Some of the leading women directors in Iran today will also be visiting Cambridge during the course of the exhibition and there will be a special seminar, organised by the ̽��ֱ��'s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), to coincide with the event.

For the last 30 years, few people outside Iran have known what life was like for women inside its borders. During that time, the country has endured not just revolution and the establishment of an Islamic Republic, but an eight-year war in which Tehran was bombed repeatedly by Saddam Hussein. Uniquely, Thirty Years Of Solitude only examines the artistic expression of women living inside Iran, rather than the better-documented work of Iranian artists living abroad.

Faryar Javaherian, the exhibition's curator and deputy director of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, said: “I have attempted to reveal the anxiety, isolation and sense of loss that Iranian society at large and women artists in particular have been experiencing for the last 30 years.

“This existential feeling is deeply rooted in the experience of life as it goes on in Iran. For that reason the diaspora is not included in the exhibition.”

̽��ֱ��exhibition examines how women deal with problems such as religious paternalism, a loss of identity, a sense of isolation from the rest of the world, and war. Perhaps surprisingly, often these difficulties are confronted with humour. Niki Karimi's film A Few Days Later is one such example, in which the central character is constantly harassed in her home and the workplace, only for the film to end with an ironic twist.

There are also stark insights into some of the lesser-known aspects of Iran's recent history. ̽��ֱ��1981-9 war with Iraq, for instance, was pronounced a Jihad, in which thousands of Iranian children and teenagers became Martyrs in the name of their country and their religion. This aspect of the conflict and its devastating effects for women was covered little by the Western media of the day. Bani-Etemad's film Guilaneh is a new version of Mother Courage that portrays the emotional pain, loss and self-sacrifice Iranian mothers endured at the time.

Much of the photography on display is loaded with powerful symbolism, and it includes work by internationally-renowned artists. Gilan Hashemi-Zonous and Hana Darabi have both produced portraits of worn-looking housekeepers whose isolation is emphasised by the wide, sometimes grand domestic settings against which they are pictured. Seleh Aboutaleb obscures her subject's face completely in a traditional black veil. ̽��ֱ��woman in question is pictured against a desert background, holding a mirror under her chin so that the barren surroundings seem to reflect an internal emptiness.

New Hall, as well as being a women's college, has a strong artistic tradition and already boasts a distinguished collection of works by more than 70 women artists.

College President Anne Lonsdale said: “ ̽��ֱ��New Hall Art Collection gives our students the chance to live among living art. It also means that there is a strong assertion of what women can achieve all around them on the very walls of the college buildings. We are proud to be able to continue that artistic tradition by bringing this timely display of work by Iranian women to New Hall and Cambridge.”

Thirty Years Of Solitude will be open to the public at New Hall, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, from February 16 to March 12. Entry is free. Booking details for the CRASSH seminar, on February 24, can be found by clicking the link to the right of this page. All films are free to attend on a first-come, first-served basis, but those booking for the seminar will have places at the two screenings that day reserved for them.