In her paintings, Iranian artist Maryam Salahi usually portrays women with their mouths painted over or behind a veil made of a piece of cloth or chiffon added to the canvas. But some of the women in the works displayed in “IDs please,” her current exhibition at the F Art Gallery in Istanbul, have no faces at all.

“In our societies, women are allowed to speak little. That's the preference of a society that does not want women to be outspoken,” Salahi told Al-Monitor. “But inside those silent women, there is a volcano or a killer that could come out. That’s the real situation in the Middle East. Women live under pressure. So this is what I paint.”

Salahi moved to Turkey 11 years ago. In an interview with KulturSanat, she said she left Iran for Istanbul in search of better opportunities, feeling she had done all she could do in Tehran. Before moving permanently, Salahi earned a bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tabriz Azad University, and in Istanbul, she is currently studying for her doctorate at Yeditepe University. Her thesis concerns identity and is titled “Art Pieces Made and Evaluated on Common Values ​​— Religion, Language, Race and Identity — after the '70s.”

“The Turks and the Iranians do not feel free in their own countries,” Salahi said. “In these two countries, we have an identity problem. Iran is a desperate case. In Turkey, there are other kinds of problems. Many unhappy people [in the Middle East] want to flee to the Western countries. They are angry at the West but nevertheless want to settle in the West. No one is honest.”