Decades of institutional corruption, elitist exploitation, and social abuses have been sewn into the political fabric of Iran’s dictatorial Islamic republic and have moulded Kermanshah-born fine art painter Nicky Nodoumi’s satirical motifs. His sleight-of-hand and incisive visual commentaries often vilified yet prohibited nationwide by his authoritarian foes, expressed opposition towards the late 20th-century tyrannical regime usurped by Ayatollah Khomeini, a Shia fundamentalist who orchestrated a coup d’etat to execute the monarchical despotism of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979. After his 1969 departure from Iran to reside in New York, Nodoumi’s artistic career was devoted to illustrating his ideological resistance captured in his print-making oeuvres, which portrayed derisive caricatures lampooning Iranian and American imperial leaders. He notably produced a 1978 depiction titled “Long Live Freedom,” a propagandist piece dedicated to a radical leftist movement as a campaign for civil disobedience to Shah’s iniquitous incarceration of political dissenters. His sketch illustrates a colossal serrated tip of a black and white bayonet, that penetrated a prison cell to coerce a gagged inmate. The poignant artwork articulates a doleful, yet cynical remark on Iran’s state entropy, asserting “the problem is people, when they come into power no matter what, they do bad things.”
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