Ode to Love (portrait of Marzieh)

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Downing Street

This work depicts the traditional Persian singer Khadijeh Ashraf o-Sadat Mortezaie (1924–2010). Adopting the stage name Marzieh, meaning laudable or agreeable, she became a household name in pre-revolutionary Iran, her rich throaty mezzo-soprano likened to Edith Piaf and Maria Callas. She was known for her expressive interpretations of songs of love. Her first major public performance was in 1942, when, still a teenager, she played the principal role of Shirin at the Jame’eh Barbod Opera House in the Persian romantic operetta Shirin and Farhad. It was an immediate success and over the coming years she performed for many world leaders, including the Shah of Iran, Queen Elizabeth II, de Gaulle and Nixon. 

Following the Islamic Revolution of 1979 public performances and radio broadcasts by female singers were banned outright. Merzieh was called to Evin Prison and forced to sign a letter of penitence. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph she said that to continue her vocal practice she used to walk by night from her home in the historic north-Tehran Niavaran foothills to her cabin in the mountains, where she would sing next to a roaring waterfall. ‘Nobody could hear me. I sang to the stars and the rocks.’ 

In 1994, while visiting Paris she defected, leaving her first husband, daughter and grandchild in Iran. She later joined the controversial Mojahedin-e-Khalgh opposition movement in Iraq, drawing criticism from the west and some Iranian exiles. The group, which advocated the overthrow of the Iranian government, was on the list of foreign terrorist organisations but has been removed in recent years. Interviewers often asked Marzieh, who had been largely apolitical as a young woman, what had moved her to join the resistance. Speaking to The Scotsman in 1999, she replied by quoting Rumi, the revered 13th-century Persian poet: ‘I am looking for that which cannot be found, / For I am fed up with beasts and ogres / And I yearn for a human being.’ Merzieh died of cancer in 2010 in Paris.

Soheila Sokhanvari (born 1995, Shiraz, Iran), a studio artist at Wysing Arts Centre since 2013, received her BA in Art History and Fine Arts from Anglia Ruskin University in 2005, a postgraduate diploma in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design and an MFA from Goldsmiths in 2011. She was the Derek Hill Foundation Scholar at the British School at Rome in 2018 and has exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East. Recent solo exhibitions include Rebel, Rebel, The Curve, Barbican Centre, 2022/23; Addicted to Love, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, 2019; and LDWN, an installation at Victoria Station, London, a collaboration between the Tate Collective and City Hall, 2018. She had a solo show at Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge University, in 2024. Her work is in international private and public collections, including LACMA, USA; National Gallery of Victoria, Australia; The New Art Gallery Walsall; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Murray Edwards College, Cambridge; and Pallant House Gallery.

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

Artist

Soheila Sokhanvari (1964 - )

Title

Ode to Love (portrait of Marzieh)

Date

2023

Medium

Egg tempera on calf vellum, 22.9ct gold on the neckline

Dimensions

height: 35.40 cm; width: 30 cm; depth: 3.8 cm

Provenance

Purchased from Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, April 2023

GAC number

19169