Portrait: Zhila Taghizadeh

Boisterous, high-spirited Zhila Taghizadeh is a 41 year-old painter who works mainly on children's paintings and surrealist motifs . She also designs puppets and toys, is the illustrator of over a dozen children's books, and works as a designer for children's magazines. Taghizadeh entered college in 1362 (1983), when the university re-opened after having been shut down for three years following the revolution. She enrolled in the only all-women's university in Tehran, where she studied graphic design. She has been painting from the very beginning of her studies, though painting only at night, or during holidays, since she held jobs both in the administration and as a college tutor, and also worked for TV- and theatre projects as a set- or puppet designer. It was during this tenure at the college that she first participated in group and individual gallery showings.

After twenty years as a civil servant, as soon as she became eligible for retirement, she quit her job, frustrated with the lack of support, and the rivalry among college staff ("especially female staff"). According to her proper estimate, the art faculty at this all-woman university included roughly 700 students, many of which had come from neighboring countries. Yet students were generally only encouraged, she explained, as long as they weren't too ambitious - once they started aiming for important exhibitions or international scholarships, the teaching staff balked, and started treating the overachievers with suspicion.

But Ms. Taghizadeh also insisted on how much the school had evolved since the early postrevolutionary period. Social control, for example, had once been ubiquitous; students would even chide their professors for inappropriate clothing, or their lack of Islamic integrity (on one occasion, as students were huddling around a professor to get a look at a tiny painting, someone whipped out a ruler and said, "this is one meter. You're not to get any closer than that").

Ms. Taghizadeh has been married for ten years now, and has a young daughter, though what might bear mentioning is that her spouse is ten years younger than her, a rarity in Iran. The marriage had come as a surprise to everyone, especially those who would tease her for being single at 31, saying she was sure to wind up with some old fart. The couple married without telling their families, and initially continued to lead their lives as if nothing had happened, living at their respective parents' homes. Most of their relatives still bear a grudge for having been presented with a fait accompli. As for her husband Mehrdad, when he told his mother, she simply replied that so much the better - this way, she hadn't had to deal with preparing a big and tiresome wedding party.

After retiring, Zhila Taghizadeh devoted herself full-time to her artwork, but after less than a year, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the entire following year was devoted to her treatment. She began her first post-cancer painting project while still recovering from surgery, and has since exhibited dozens of paintings in individual showings.

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