Parastou Forouhar (born 1962 in Tehran) is an Iranian installation artist who lives and works out of Frankfurt, Germany. Forouhar's art reflects her criticism of the Iranian government and often plays with the ideas of identity. Her artwork expresses a critical response towards the politics in Iran and Islamic Fundamentalism. The loss of her parents, Dariush and Parvaneh, fuels Forouhar's work and challenges viewers to take a stand on war crimes against innocent citizens. Forouhar's work has been exhibited around the world including Iran, Germany, Russia, Turkey, England, United States, and more. Biography Early life and education The daughter of political activist Parvaneh Forouhar (née Eskandari) and politician Dariush Forouhar, Parastou was born in 1962 in Tehran, Iran. Her father critiqued the Iranian government and he founded and led the Hezb-e-Mellat-e Iran (Nation Party of Iran), which was a far-right secular opposition party in Iran. Her parents were stabbed to death in their home on November 22 of 1998 by a secret operation of Iranian Intelligence service, which is widely known as the Chain Murder. This led Parastou Forouhar to dedicate her life to revealing the atrocities of the Iranian state through her expressive art. Despite it now being more than 20 years since the incident, the state intelligence still impedes her from holding a public commemoration for her parents. She has been threatened by the intelligence service several times and was finally sentenced to six years of conditional prison in 2017. Parastou lives in exile in Germany, and her work has been widely displayed inside and outside of Iran. Parastou studied art at the University of Tehran from 1984 until 1990, where she earned her B.A., she then continued to study at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (High School for Design) in Offenbach am Main in Germany and went on to earn her M.A. in 1994. Parastou lives with her two children in Frankfurt Germany now. Work Forouhar's work is autobiographical in nature and responds to the politics that have shaped and defined contemporary Iranian citizenship both in Iran and abroad. She works within a range of media including site specific installation, animation, digital drawing, photography, signs and products. Through her work, she processes very real experiences of loss, pain, and state-sanctioned violence through animations, wallpapers, flipbooks, and drawings. Forouhar uses culturally specific motifs found within traditional Iranian arts such as Islamic calligraphy and Persian miniature painting to question the