Forouhar’s powerful work shows a unique combination of a rigorous German training, wonderful sense of humour, admirable resilience, and deep understanding of her Iranian background.

Her intriguing photographs are from an ongoing series of work based on her experience as an Iranian inside and outside Iran. The Swanrider series was made in Germany and centres on western perception of easterners, while her marvellous digital drawings of butterflies, Parvaneh, are named after her mother, who was killed with her husband in an unsolved, possibly political, murder.

Her creativity expands into many spheres. Eslimi (Ornaments) is a fabric pattern-book of deceptive charm. Look closer and we see the patterns are composed of instruments of torture such as whips, knives, needles, knuckledusters and pistols - elements that reappear in the mesmerising Digital Drawings, which seem decorative from afar, but are actually kaleidoscopic patterns of gruesome objects and events. They are spellbinding, dramatic, tragic and also, in terms of aesthetics, wonderfully expressed. Similarly, the series, Signs plays on the imagery of road and traffic signs to express the battle of the sexes in Iran: for women, there is no entry and access denied, while men enjoy right of way. Individually and together, the works are startling, thought-provoking, and disturbingly attractive.

Forouhar’s work is more than engaged - it initiates public discourse. She has inherited a family tradition – the quest for justice – and has translated that into a new aesthetic vocabulary.