Iranian Women Break Down Kitchen Walls for Equality (Literally: Breaking Them Down!)

An architect has set up an installation in the United Arab Emirates displaying Iranian women’s “signs of resistance” in their home country – capturing their artistic decorations and destruction of kitchen walls in a challenge against patriarchy.

The Iranian-Australian architect, Samaneh Moafi, explains that some women she worked with for her “Parable of Mehr” project put up elaborate decorations in their homes in Iran, while others broke down walls that separated women in the kitchen from men in the living room. “They showed their desire for a better life,” says Moafi to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

According to Moafi, the name of the project comes from one of Iran’s largest public housing initiatives, which prioritized married men who were supporting their family. The Mehr buildings were structures with few communal spaces, giving women little chance to interact with each other.

For one of her prototype experiments, the architect tackles this issue through a “nazri” ritual known to solve problems: Moafi had women in a Mehri parking area cook a labor-intensive dish together in a car park for eleven hours. The women, who mostly didn’t know each other, had their chance to interact more with each other, taking a break from their routine.