Nan

Nan began with a chance introduction to the story of a Wellesley College alumna from 1904 who spent 40 years in Iran, helping to open one of that country’s first schools for women. Additional research led the project to expand beyond her individual life to a consideration of the development of women’s education in Iran more broadly. The pieces on display here combine a multitude of individual stories and national histories, interweaving the current state of women’s education and access to knowledge with the contemporary struggle for women to maintain ownership of their own bodies and minds. Images may convey a version of truth where written documents fail, or where some written histories are deliberately omitted. These visual artifacts are also less proscriptive and didactic than texts might be; rather than seeking to write a definitive history, they themselves gaze upon both history and the present condition and invite their viewers to do the same.