Asemeh Davarmanesh
Art reflects the beauties, but in my view there is a specific art which reflects the beauty of human values and that is the art of resistance…
My name is Asemeh Davarmanesh
I can remember I had a special love for arts since I was a child.
I loved to draw; I loved to write poems, I loved to play musical instruments. My color pencils and my musical instrument, were my best friends of life…
I remember that in my teenage years in Sweden, I enjoyed all the moments I did artwork. However, there always was a voice from within that told me, “Before anything else, you belong to your country, Iran, and its people. You belong to Iran where street children work in winter and their small hands get chopped in the cold and their bare feet get frozen. You belong to Iran, where the youth are imprisoned and hanged on various pretexts…”
The voice of my conscience was with me all the time, in the happiest moments of my life…
I can remember that one night I decided to respond to that voice. That night, I did not sleep even for a moment. I told myself: “If my decision was to fight for Iran’s freedom, then my days and nights could no longer be like the calm and safe life I enjoyed in Sweden. It was a path which needed risk-taking, and sacrifice. It needed a brave woman who could accept all the hardships with open arms to achieve victory for her cause.”
That night, I thought for hours and hours and finally, I made my decision.
In a word, my decision was for Iran, not for myself. For the freedom of my people, not for my own comfort and well-being… That night I vowed to join the People’s Mojahedin Organization.
It did not take long before I could join my other sisters and brothers, and of course my mother, in Ashraf, the epicenter of struggle for Iran’s freedom.
Now, 18 years pass since that night…
Today, in moving along with the Iranian Resistance I have travelled from Ashraf to Liberty and from Liberty to Albania. And while I have been fighting for freedom, I have been playing my instrument and I have been painting. But there is a difference…
The music coming out of my instrument is the sound of freedom and resistance…
And the colors of my paintings are the rays of light that will shatter the darkness of dictatorship in my homeland…
