Painter and illustrator Sanaz Hakimi is Örebro’s new ICORN resident

In December 2023, Sanaz Hakimi arrived in Örebro, Sweden and took up the ICORN residency for the period 2023-2025. Reflecting on the news of Örebro’s new ICORN resident, Madelene Spinord Semenet, Chairperson for Culture and Recreation, said:

It feels good that we have now received our third artist who can have Örebro as her City of Refuge! It is an important task that we can offer a safe place for Sanaz Hakimi to work freely. Being an ICORN City of Refuge is also an important part of showing that we as a municipality stand up for democracy and international solidarity.

Sanaz Hakimi holds a BA in Graphic Arts and a MA in Illustration from the University of Tehran, Iran. She has been an active artist since 2005 and her work spans across a variety of genres, including painting, pottery, ceramics, and murals. Sanaz has also worked as costume and set designer, art teacher, and tattoo artist.

Much of Sanaz Hakimi’s work focuses on the culture and traditions of Hazara people in Afghanistan, as well as the situation of women in Afghanistan, more generally. Examples of this include Hakimi’s painting ‘Spring and Blood’, commemorating Bahar, a Hazara girl who was killed in an explosion caused by the Taliban and ‘Hero of Freedom’, dedicated to the women of Afghanistan who, in the artist’s words, ‘are alive, but do not live’.

In her depictions of Hazara culture, Sanaz Hakimi has focused on the Buddhas of Bamiyan statues carved into cliffs in the Bamiyan Valley in Central Afghanistan approximately 1500 years ago. The statues are surrounded by caves decorated with Buddhist murals and both were declared to be ‘idols’ and destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. The Buddhas of Bamiyan remain crucial symbols of Hazara identity and culture. Hakimi’s paintings based on the Buddha statues and murals were exhibited at the 2021 Nami Concours in South Korea and her work has also appeared in several exhibitions in Iran and elsewhere.

Sanaz, as a woman artist and a member of the Hazara community living between Afghanistan and Iran, experienced limitations on her artistic work. This caused her to limit the output of her work and ultimately leave the region.

Örebro ICORN City of Refuge

The Swedish city of Örebro has been an ICORN City of Refuge since 2016, welcoming artist Fikret Atay from Turkey as its first ICORN resident a year later in 2017. The city’s second ICORN resident was Sudanese painted and visual artist who was welcomed in 2021.

Örebro is currently hosting painted and illustrator Sanaz Hakimi from Afghanistan who arrived in Sweden at the end of 2023. Hakimi continues her artistic work in Örebro and is planning exhibitions in her host community as well as further study during her ICORN residency.

In the media:

‘In Örebro, Sanaz can continue painting - without being persecuted’, Nerikes Allehanda (in Swedish).

‘Örebro is once again a haven for persecuted artists’, Nerikes Allehanda (in Swedish).

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