Niloufar Lovegrove is a Rockhampton-based printmaker and muralist, best known for her illustrative, storytelling aesthetic. Lovegrove’s printmaking practice renders traditional, everyday motif from her Persian upbringing into unique visual narratives that exploring contemporary social issues. This diptych titled 'Succeeding tresses' references themes of freedom and women’s rights in Iran from a Persian diaspora perspective.

Currently Irani citizens are subjected to human rights violations including censored media, militarised response to local and nationwide protests and the victimisation of women and other minority communities by molarity policy. Through this work Lovegrove adds to the widespread international condemnation of the Islamic regime’s actions, which drew international attention after Masha Jina Amini’s death in the custody of the molarity police in September 2022.

Advocacy via her artistic process is a new focal point in Lovegrove’s artmaking practice—a means of expressing her desire to see liberation for women in her birth country. In 'Succeeding tresses' Lovegrove's advocates for a liberated and joyful future, free from entrenched gender-based discrimination and violence. Her wishful images include women dancing to what she labels 'the song of freedom'—the artist's symbolic reference to the ‘Women, Life, Freedom Movement’ for which the death of Amini has been a catalyst for protest.

Lovegrove had her first major institutional exhibition in 2022 at Artspace Mackay, pushing her printmaking practice with 'Equable goddess', a 54-panel installation of linocuts prints. 'Succeeding tresses' is a legacy work from this large installation, made from the same plates. Following her Artspace Mackay exhibition Lovegrove won the Burnie Print Prize (Burnie Regional Art Gallery, 2023) and was awarded the Bayton Art Prize (Rockhampton Museum of Art, 2023) with a paper-based sculptural work exploring human rights violations against the women of Iran.

Artspace Mackay 2023.