Courage of Iranian Women: Freedom, a Monochrome Painting

Freedom is a painting made in tribute to the courage and resistance of Iranian women: a single woman rising, in black, white and grey, on a canvas two metres square. Mixed media with a relief surface, 200 × 200 cm, painted in 2025 by Maryam Moghaddam, an abstract figurative painter — women, myth and movement — with studios in Newmarket, Ontario and Sweden.

The story behind Freedom

For well over a century, Iranian women have written, taught, argued, sung and marched for the right to decide their own lives. Every generation has had its own names and its own losses, and the courage has run on unbroken from one to the next. That continuity is the subject here: not an event or a slogan, but a quality of spirit — the decision to stand upright and be seen, whatever it costs.

The artist describes the painting as embodying “the unbreakable spirit of those who rise against oppression in pursuit of dignity, autonomy, and voice.” The woman in it is not a portrait of anyone. She climbs through a circle of light with her head lifted and one arm raised, the folds of her dress streaming behind her like smoke, and she “moves with defiance and grace, transforming pain into power.” She is every woman who has done that, and the painting is a way of keeping faith with them.

How the painting is made

Freedom is mixed media on canvas, 200 × 200 cm, from the artist’s Figurative series. It is deliberately rendered in monochrome: as she puts it, the absence of colour “strips away distraction, leaving only the raw essence of resilience, liberation, and the timeless human longing to be free.” The surface is built up in relief, so the painting has physical depth as well as tone, and the raised passages catch the light. Because of that surface it cannot be rolled; the painting ships as oversize freight in a custom wooden crate.

Where it would live

This is a painting to build a room around. Two metres square needs a wall at least three metres wide and a ceiling to match: a double-height living room, a loft, a stair hall, a foyer, a boardroom or lobby, a gallery wall. Because it has no colour it argues with nothing; it holds its own against timber, concrete, plaster and paint of any shade. Light it from the side — from a window or a wall-washer — and the relief comes alive; the figure appears to move as the daylight shifts.

Collect

The original Freedom (200 × 200 cm, mixed media relief on canvas, CAD 7,900) is a one-of-a-kind work, signed by the artist and shipped worldwide from Newmarket, Ontario — crated, insured and with a certificate of authenticity; shipping is quoted for your address before purchase: see the original painting. Freedom is not currently offered as a print, but other works from the same series are: See the prints.