This, Alma Sinai says of her work Witness, chosen for this issue’s cover, “is the first painting I did as an undergraduate student in 2010, while I was studying fine arts at RISD [Rhode Island School of Design]. A lot has changed since then, but also many things have stayed the same.”
I corresponded with Sinai in the last days of September 2022, during the early days of the mass protests that shook Iran in the fall—revolts that, most likely, will be remembered as a feminist revolution. These are, suddenly and again, moving and thrilling times for everyone who cares about women’s and human rights, times filled with hope, admiration, and fear. That is certainly so for an artist like Sinai, who was born and raised in Iran and studied at Tehran University of Art and then moved to the United States in 2010, and these feelings echoed in...
