Since mid-September, artists around the world have been staging protest-performances, joining rallies, and circulating open letters to support the growing Iranian movement calling for women’s rights and an end to the country’s theocratic regime.
The mass protests, which spread to more than 80 cities in Iran even amid an internet blackout, were sparked by the death of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini on September 16 after the morality police held her in detention for not wearing a hijab properly. In August, Iran’s hardline Islamist government passed a new “hijab and chastity” law ordering stricter enforcement of women’s dress in public and online.
On September 25, Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi posted an Instagram video encouraging people “to stand in solidarity with the powerful and
