Performance & Opening: Not A Typical Persian Girl

In connection with the opening of Not a Typical Persian Girl, a live performance will take place at Fotografiska, where a new work is created in front of an audience. Over the course of the evening, the piece is completed and installed directly in the exhibition space. The artist duo Atoosa Farahmand and Oscar Hagberg address a highly topical subject: the conditions of women in Iran, a daily reality shaped by oppression, but also by resistance, strength, and a refusal to be silenced.

The work takes its starting point in a series of black-and-white photographs. Using red lipstick, a charged gesture is introduced into the images as the works gradually take shape in the room. Through the meeting of action, image, and movement, the work unfolds in real time. Visitors are invited to follow the process on site, supported by projections that show the performance live.

This is a rare opportunity to experience how a work comes into being at the intersection of photography, performance, and film. The documentation of the performance then becomes part of the exhibition, a trace of how the work was created, right here at Fotografiska.

With live music, mingling, a book release, and performance, we invite you to an evening where art takes center stage and process becomes part of the experience.

Not a Typical Persian Girl is part of Fotografiska’s Emerging Artist program and marks the first time an artist duo is presented within the series.

About Atoosa Farahmand and Oscar Hagberg

Atoosa Farahmand and Oscar Hagberg are known for their multidisciplinary practice, where performance, photographic storytelling, and installation intersect—always grounded in their artistic research on women’s history in Iran, from 1850 to the present day. Through staged and experimental approaches, they explore themes of identity, transformation, and resistance, creating works that invite reflection on political and social conditions. In conjunction with the exhibition opening, Farahmand and Hagberg also release a new book of the same name, bringing together their research on women’s rights—past and present—with photographs and interviews in which women and non-binary people from Iran and the diaspora share their perspectives.