A screen of 504 eye patches sewn together with black thread bisects the gallery wall into two sections. On each side of the curtain, part of a sentence is readable. The words are translated in English on the left, and in the original Persian (Farsi) on the right. The black screen of eye patches partially obscures the rest of the text underneath, while at the same time reveals blurred images of Iranians shot in the eye during the protests of the last year.

One of the many Iranians wounded in the last year, was a young law student from southern city of Bandar Abbas, Iran: Ghazal Ranjkesh. Ghazal was a 21 year old protestor, shot in the right eye on 20 September 2022. Her story is one of many hundreds about protestors that have been wounded in this manner. The common perception is that targeting the eyes, breasts and buttocks of female protestors in particular, is intentional. The eyes are central to the idea of beauty in Iran, and have a mythical status in Persian culture. To target them is to strike at the core of femininity, to mutilate the essence of womanhood.

Since mid-September 2022, in the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in Iran, over 500 people have been killed, 7 have been publicly executed, and over 20,000 have been detained. Countless others have been wounded. Among the most egregious wounds, are on those that are deliberately shot in the face with riot control weapons. Hundreds of victims have suffered severe eye injuries inflicted by metal pellets and rubber bullets of Iranian security forces’ brutal crackdown of protests. Ghazal was one of them. She survived the attack and was able to post to her Instagram feed what she had witnessed before her eye went black. She notes:

“…the last image my right eye captured was the smile of the person who was shooting at me…”