Iranian painter's mouthless women speak volumes at Istanbul exhibition

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.”