Illustrations that capture the changing face of Iran
- Text by Iman Sultan
- Illustrations by Beeta Baghoolizadeh
Beeta Baghoolizadeh wasn’t always an artist. A PhD candidate in history at the University of Pennsylvania, she only started doodling on her husband’s iPad after a trip to Iran last summer. “I was really aware of how much everything was changing in Iran, and how the next time it wouldn’t be the same,” she explains. “So I started drawing what I saw.”
Baghoolizadeh decided to capture what she was seeing in a series of digital illustrations, drawing from the country’s everyday street scenes, old family photographs and even postcards. The result was Diaspora Letters – a collection of new media art that captures what it’s like to be an everyday citizen of Iran.
“New buildings are being built, new highways are being built,” the Iranian-American artist explains. “There’s new and there’s old being replenished constantly.”
The people in Baghoolizadeh’s drawings – who she refers to as “abstracted identities” – are based on real people from her life.
“It just becomes an amalgam of my imagination: specific memories I have and then personal photographs,” she says. “These are all very banal, everyday, mundane things that don’t get circulated in media. They don’t get preserved in archives, they’re too boring for that – and I think there’s a sort of poetry to that boringness.”
The mundanity doesn’t just humanise the people in Baghoolizadeh’s drawings, it also draws the viewer into a universal experience of family, home, and belonging.
“I was really overwhelmed by this idea that the next time I returned, it’s not just the landscape of the city that’s changing,” she adds. “It’s my personal landscape as well.”
See more of Beeta Baghoolizadeh’s work on Instagram.
Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
You might like
Moshpits & kickflips at the Volcom Garden Experience 2026
Family affair — Last weekend, the skate, surf and snow culture brand hosted a free mini festival in its European backyard of Biarritz. We went along and chatted to legendary artist and surfer Ozzie Wright.
Written by: Isaac Muk
Horst Festival is a blueprint for a creative, collective future
Hymn — Highlighted by an engrossing performance directed by Fallon Mayanja, the 2026 edition was a showcase of ASIAT Park’s ever-evolving space as an incubator for art, music and creativity.
Written by: Isaac Muk
Venice Biennale will not award artists from Israel & Russia due to war crime accusations
Art Not Genocide — Both countries will still be allowed to exhibit work at their respective pavilions, but be excluded from judging considerations, as they have leaders facing arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court.
Written by: Noah Petersons
“I didn’t care if I got sacked”: Sleazenation’s Scott King in conversation with Radge’s Meg McWilliams
Radgenation — For our 20th Anniversary Issue, Huck’s editor Josh Jones sits down with the legendary art director and the founder of a new magazine from England’s northeast to talk about taking risks, crafting singular covers and disrupting the middle class dominance of the creative industries.
Written by: Josh Jones
Joe Bloom’s View From a Bridge
More stories, more human — The artist and creator of the vertical video generation’s most loved storytelling platform explains the process behind creating the show, and the importance of bucking trends.
Written by: Isaac Muk
When David Wojnarowicz became Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud in New York — In 1978, the American artist and his friends donned masks to pay tribute to the French poet, who was born a century before him. Miss Rosen traces the differing yet parallel lives of the queer revolutionaries.
Written by: Miss Rosen
