Two weeks into the war that President Donald Trump initially said was intended to force regime change in Tehran, the Iranians living here say their families are mostly huddled at home, trying to avoid both the U.S.-Israeli strikes and supporters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) patrolling the streets with guns.
Internet access in Iran is tightly controlled by the government, which operates one of the most restrictive systems of online censorship in the world. Internet traffic is routed through state-controlled infrastructure that allows authorities to monitor usage and block thousands of websites, including social media platforms, international news sources and messaging apps.
Two or three weeks ago, I would've thought that Iran might be free by the time I was 90, and I could die there. I had this vision of me walking through the airport with a cane. Now, at age 48, I can see myself making a trip back to Iran within the next year, and potentially living there permanently within the next five.
The Greater Los Angeles area is home to the largest concentration of people of Iranian descent outside Iran. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, it has served as a capital for exiles. By 2019, more than half of Iranian immigrants to the U.S. lived in California, with 29% - nearly 140,000 people - living in Los Angeles County alone.
This is a fantastic day we could not even imagine in our dreams. Hopefully the regime will change, the shah will return back home and we will have a glorious future for Iran. She had emigrated from Tehran 10 years ago and brought her husband, infant son and mother to celebrate in Westwood, the epicenter of L.A.'s sprawling Iranian diaspora.
In Arash Nassiri's new moving-image commission, an insect puppet drags itself across an empty marble floor, cast in eerie blue evening light. The scene is diffused through an enormous frosted-glass cubicle, refracting and distorting the images. That sense of distortion pervades the Tehran-born, Berlin-based Nassiri's first institutional solo exhibition, A Bug's Life, which opened last weekend at London's Chisenhale Gallery-and comprises a film set within a sculptural installation.
It hits me like a wall as the glass doors slide open: an unidentifiable scent - toasted, warm and slightly sweet. At international markets, smell, inextricably linked to our memories and emotions, is often a one-way plane ticket home. Imported laundry detergent, tightly sealed jars of hard-to-find spices, fragrant incense and loose teas are all olfactory postcards. At Q Market & Produce in Lake Balboa, this is no different. Its scent, while unrecognizable to me, is a reminder to others of life in Iran.