Khosrow Hassanzadeh

Who is Khosrow Hassanzadeh?

Khosrow Hassanzadeh is an Iranian painter. He is known for his "Terrorist" collection.

Hassanzadeh was born in 1963 in Tehran, to a working class Azerbaijani family and currently lives and works in Tehran, where he works as an actor and visual artist. His work featured in many exhibitions in Europe and the Middle East. Hassanzadeh works primarily with painting, silkscreen and mixed media. His works often deal with issues that are considered sensitive in Iranian society and therefore he is frequently referred to as a 'political' artist. Hassanzadeh first gained international recognition with War, a grim and trenchant diary of his own experiences as a volunteer soldier during the Iran-Iraq war. In Ashura a 'women-friendly' interpretation of the most revered Shiite religious ceremony, he depicted chador-clad women engulfed by religious iconography. Chador and Prostitutes continued his exploration of sociological themes particular to Iran's hyper-gendered urban landscape. The latter paintings used police mug shots to pay tribute to sixteen prostitutes killed by a serial killer in Mashhad, a religious capital of Iran. The paintings were created after filmmaker Maziar Bahari commissioned Hassanzadeh to create a poster for his film, And Along Came a Spider. In Terrorist the artist questions the concept of 'terrorism' in international politics by portraying himself, his mother and sisters as 'terrorists'.