Nahid Hagigat’s oeuvre focuses on the lives of Iranian women, often touching on political issues such as state surveillance and veiling. After she left for the United States before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, her sister sent her photographs of women from villages in the Kurdistan and Baluchestan regions, which she would use as inspiration for her work. Here, the top of the print shows five different representations of traditional water jugs that were produced into the twentieth century. Placed above a woman carrying such a jar, the repetitive motif mirrors the monotony of women’s difficult and tiring job as water carriers. The woman whose face is obscured by her chador labors under the weight of a jar, her arm mimicking the handle of the vessel, as if she is morphing into her task.
Hagigat began her studies at Tehran University, later moving to New York in 1968, where she completed a doctorate in art
education at NYU and received a second in art and behavioral therapy at Huntington Pacific University. Hagigat was the first
artist to show printmaking in Iran, a medium that was previously little appreciated.
