Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-French artist, writer, and filmmaker, passed away at the age of 56. Best known for her memoir Persepolis, Satrapi was one of the most important voices in visual contemporary visual storytelling. Her death marked the end of a deeply impactful life, both artistically and politically speaking.
She was born in 1969 in Iran and grew up during the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. Her life, from a very early age, was shaped by oppressive political forces, which she describes in Persepolis. She lived in Europe during her teenage years, in a period that strongly influenced her view of exile and cultural displacement.
After permanently leaving Iran, she settled in France, where she studied art and worked as an illustrator. She gained international recognition with Persepolis, her first major publishing, but she refused to crystallise herself into that one work. Indeed, she wrote other novels, such as Embroideries and Chicken and Plums, while also challenging her creativity through cinematic productions. Her animated film adaptation of Persepolis, which she co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud, won the Jury Award at Cannes in 2007 and was nominated for an Academy Award. After the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died on September 16th, 2022, after being arrested by the Iranian police for violating the country’s dress code, she published Woman, Life, Freedom. With this graphic anthology, Satrapi once again denounced women’s oppression in Iran through her powerful voice and one-of-a-kind art.
From an artistic viewpoint, Satrapi’s work represents an important threshold: she showed that graphic novels could not be dismissed as juvenile, escapist, or merely playful. She demonstrated that a graphic novel could deal with themes such as autobiography, trauma, dictatorship, exile and memories in a direct and at times ironic, yet extremely powerful, way. Persepolis, specifically, was written to be so much more than a simple depiction of Iran during the Revolution. With this work, Satrapi revealed exactly to what extent political ideologies infiltrated her life since her earliest years. Their consequences were not only riots and public disorders, but rather intimate and private experiences: family arguments, school rules, music, teenage rebellion, and a young girl’s nightmares.
Satrapi used her voice to resist both Iranian political propaganda and Western stereotypes. She refused to depict an oversimplified or manichean Iran. Instead, she portrayed her country as a society full of contradictions, where fear and humour, oppression and rebellion, tradition and modernity existed side by side. In particular, she depicted Iranian women as witty, intelligent, funny, angry, and politically aware. Her female characters are not mere victims, nor are they passive: they speak, laugh, protest, argue and dream. Through them, Satrapi reiterated how political resistance is not solely made of acts of open and public protest. Every act of freedom, as small as it might seem from our perspective, was indeed an act of resistance. In Satrapi’s experience, even wearing lipstick was dangerous, because it meant claiming ownership over one’s body and identity; in a society that tried to control both. These women’s everyday life was a battle ground for political resistance, and Satrapi’s work is so powerful because she revealed the complexities of an ideological war that was fought through daily choices.
In Persepolis and all her later works, Satrapi did not ask her readers to pity her or Iran, nor did she romanticise her experience. She did not present her pain as something distant, heroic, or incomprehensible. She, instead, used art to bring it closer to the reader, without simplifying it. She gave voice to an almost archaic human need in a beautifully artistic way: the desire to be seen in one’s humanity, to be watched and understood. Her work reminds us that behind every political event or movement there are real people, who live the very real consequences of the turmoil around them. Her stories are such powerful ones precisely because they require more than simply observing pain; they ask us to recognise another person’s life as complex, valuable, and much closer than we might imagine.
Her life was also profoundly shaped by her exile during adolescence and, later, during adulthood. She expressed through her art the feeling of alienation that came with emigration from Iran: the feeling of belonging to a country that was no longer accessible to her and that of carrying home both as a tender memory and a painful wound. This tension she feels towards her homeland is a common theme throughout her work, showing a lasting attachment to it, while also criticising the government in power. In an interview, she said: “The word ‘home’ has only one meaning: Iran”. Yet, she could not return due to the regime. Her criticism came not from the rejection of her roots, but from a heartfelt love for her culture and from the desire to see her country free from repression.
Marjane Satrapi’s legacy does not solely lie in the wonderfully crafted works she created. The value of her art also lies in her attention to the nuances of humanity. Her approach matters because of how it rejects the oppression within Iran, and, at the same time, the oversimplified narratives proposed by other countries. She made courage her signature style. She embraced her storytelling as a form of resistance, and a very powerful one at that. She unveiled herself and her experiences to the world, turning her memories into art, and then into a political message.
Today, after her passing, we are called to reflect on the significance of her art, and of art in general. Satrapi’s contribution to the artistic community was meaningful, profound, and long-lasting. In today’s political landscape, her work is even more relevant and urgent. It is not just about her life experiences; it is about women, oppressed women, whose pursuit of freedom guides their lives. It is about embracing the complexity of a population living under political turmoil. It is about understanding the suffering of exile and the conflicting feelings of rejection and love for one’s country. Geopolitics today do not paint a peaceful picture of our world, and Marjane Satrapi has shed a light on the very real consequences of a war shaped by religious ideologies. So, we can do nothing but thank and honour her, because if there is a way towards a truly free world, it is through acknowledging the validity of all silenced voices. We are all human beings; as humans, we have the right to be free, and that is above all ideologies.
I'm a first year BAI student, with a particular interest in the intersections between technology and the human experience. Outside of my studies, I'm passionate about music, philosophy, and mental health.
