A2A: Shahrzad Changalvaee

In this episode of Artist 2 Artist, Patrisse Cullors sits down with Iranian artist Shahrzad Changalvaee, to explore the role of art in the act of resistance under oppressive powers. Shahrzad shares her background and the experience of realizing one is an artist under the limiting and oppressive demands of the Iranian government during her childhood. In her early years as an artist, she was taught that "limitations beget creativity", and while there is value in those words for many of us who forsake our everyday freedom of expression, Patrisse and Shahrzad discuss the fortitude one must cultivate in order to question the sources that offer the words we internalize as artists, as an important step to individuation and independent expression, especially when art inevitably finds its way to becoming itself an act of resistance. Explore the use of language, in art and beyond, Patrisse and Shahrzad emphasize the power of the artist to build coalition, change, abolitionist practices and challenge the regimes that seek to silence or appropriate the artistic voice. Being an artist from Iran, under a restrictive government, may have been Shahrzad's beginnings, but in her work, she revolutionized her self expression and found the power of her voice and ability to create for not only herself, but the culture she wants to celebrate. In this episode, Patrisse and Shahrzad discuss how background and cultural identity play, effect, and cultivate an artist's identity, and the deeply personal journey of finding mediums and language to ensure that the perception of the art, matches its intent; "The artist is like a shapeshifter. The artist is the through line." Using collage, metal sculpture, photography and beyond, Shahrzad offers her art and story to us as itself an act of resistance, and reminds us that while limitations may present opportunity, the language we use both within ourselves and how we choose to express our unique perspective to others, is truly the choice that translates the most healing and revolutionary power, right from the source.