When Payman Sohailie bumped into activist Leyla Mostafavi last month at a Queen’s Park rally against Iran’s bloody crackdown on civilians protesting recent election results, the Toronto photographer wondered what Iranian artists could do to show solidarity with their countrymen.
That brief conversation has resulted in a breathtaking multimedia art exhibition presented by 60 Iranian artists from in and outside of Iran that voices their emotions toward the events back home in the past month. The show will open at the Lennox Contemporary Gallery on Ossington Ave. tomorrow and runs until Sunday.
Fly with the Cage, the title of the show, came from the Sufi proverb: “If you can’t fly out of the cage, just fly with the cage.” It captures the sentiments of many Iranian artists, who are like the birds in the cage, restricted for their movement and creativity under the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad conservative regime.
