Interview with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Nazanin is a British-Iranian activist who was detained in Iran in April 2016 and was held hostage there for 6 years. She was released and returned back to the UK in March 2022. She now lives in London with her daughter and husband, and is currently writing her book, A Yard of Sky.

She joined the Koestler Arts team on the 1st of July to judge entries into the themed category for the Koestler Awards this year, Wings.

Thank you for agreeing to an interview with us, Nazanin. To start, I wanted to ask you about how it has felt here today, to be surrounded by these artworks, and to have this responsibility to select certain pieces.

It’s an honour to be here, thank you so much for having me.

I am actually quite emotional because it was a very difficult decision to pick and choose. I can only imagine what each prisoner has gone through, if they’re in custody or wherever they are, and what it means to them to create a piece of art.

And I almost wanted to choose everybody, and I wanted to give everybody the highest award. But things don’t work like that.

What was very emotional for me was that there were so many elements [to the artwork] that I have experienced in my own time in prison, and it reminded me of those times. It doesn’t matter where you are in prison, there are always certain elements which are common. And that was quite emotional as well.

Things about hope, finding hope, escape —escape not in its literal meaning, but in a way where you wish you had wings and could fly out of prison. Things like dreaming of the time you have had in the past and dream of the time that will come.

There were many pieces of writing where people had been thinking —it was basically like a letter to themselves— and they had been reminding themselves that if they were given another opportunity, they would make things right this time.

And these are all very common feelings that, as someone who has been in prison… I was a political prisoner, but there were people with me in prison who shared the same experience.

I can understand that prison and confinement will kind of generate those feelings in you, because your freedom is taken away from you. You will promise yourself that if you are going to be given another opportunity, you will make sure to live, you will make sure that it’s going to work. It made me very emotional to think about all of that.

But no one promised me that when I come out of prison things will be easy and things will be just normal. Freedom was not supposed to be an easy route. And I can’t take [the experience] away, it will always be with me. So, I have to accept it.

You mention having common ground with the people who submit work to us. I wanted to ask you what first connected you to our work, and why you chose to be a judge for our themed category?

I first came across Koestler Arts around 2022, I think it was about a couple of months after I’d come home, and I went to the Freedom exhibition curated by Ai Weiwei at the Southbank Centre. There, for the first time, I realised that there is such a place, that Koestler Arts do things to acknowledge the power of art that comes out of prisons. It really fascinated me and subsequently, through some other events, I was put in touch.

I do believe that art is a form of fighting, resilience, and resistance, and that people can —without using words— transmit and transfer a lot of emotions, thoughts, and feelings through art.

What I like about Koestler Arts is that there is this kind of equality to it. The value of a piece of art made in prison is in the story which is behind the piece, and the story of the person who has made it. And I quite like the way that Koestler Arts treats all the pieces of art equally, regardless of where they come from.

Looking at the pieces, you get curious, you try to imagine who has created this piece of art, what they have gone through, what is their story… And what fascinated me was that it almost didn’t matter, [what matters] is the art itself; and I like that in what [Koestler Arts] do.

You mention our entrants’ stories —that their past is not an obstacle to them being able to make and have this artwork exhibited. I wanted to ask you about your personal story; how you think it relates to what you did here today, how you approached judging. Did you bring your personal experiences to the role? Did they factor in at all?

One of the biggest lessons that I learned when I was in prison was to respect humanity, that every person has got a story and every person’s story is unique to their self.

One of our main problems in prison was time: you don’t know what to do with it! And it’s probably the only moment in your life that you have got a lot of time. [Laughs] There is no other time in your life that you will be like: “Oh, I don’t know what to do with my time!”

I taught myself watercolour in prison, sewing, working with leather, working with wood… Just because I had the opportunity, but also a huge amount of time. I can only imagine how exciting it must be [to entrants] to be given the opportunity to express themselves through what they created.

There is a lot to be told through creativity and making things. When you are in prison you are disconnected from your life and whatever you used to do in the free world. So, one way of reconnecting to your life again is to create. It can be through cooking, writing, reading, painting, crafts, sewing and that kind of stuff. And I think they are liberating, they open up channels for people to express themselves.

Some of the artwork felt angry. You can tell that there is a lot of injustice going on, whatever the condition of that person, the artist. But then there was a lot of hope, there was a lot of longing for the future, a better world, being together, solidarity —in particular solidarity.

You mention unusual materials. Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar in 2024, you touched on the fabrics you received from friends, and the freedom pinafore you crafted for your daughter during your time in prison. Why do you think it’s so important to have access to creativity and art in these settings? Why do people seek out these unusual materials to express themselves with?

I think one of the things that you struggle with in prison is lack of material. And I think that is exactly where creativity emerges.

In the modern world that we live in, having access to Amazon, and fast fashion, or places that sell very, very cheap stuff, you can be inundated with the material that you have. I think you are more creative if you have less access to stuff. It’s just like when you go shopping: if there are two shops, it’s much easier to buy something than when there are 25 shops! When I was in prison we would find ways to upcycle, recycle every single thing that we had because we frankly didn’t have much.

I’ve got this really magical connection with sewing in particular. Whatever I have knitted, crocheted, or sewn when I was in prison, I often think: if only they could speak up about when I made them.

They have witnessed so much. Every stitch has witnessed so much in prison. The fights, the happiness, singing of freedom, people coming back to prison. A lot of stories embedded in every single stitch.

Sewing and needlework and all of that was a way of taking solace and refuge in something which was not prison. And when the walls are coming down on you and you just want to find some sort of quiet place to forget about where you are —that’s what sewing and needlework did for me.

The freedom pinafore that you mentioned; that was a little crochet lacy outfit I made for my daughter who I think by then was three and a half, I think, not even four. And I had made little flower motifs and kind of stuck them together. Every flower was made from a piece of thread which was left from someone who had been released. Those threads had been with people in prison for a long time. Then, when they left —people usually leave their stuff behind— I accumulated them, over time, and I made that.

For me, that was a piece of their freedom, joined together for my child.

Thank you for your time Nazanin. For my final question: what gives you hope right now, either personally or in your work?

It’s a very difficult question.

What kept me going —what took me and what brought me back home— was the love of people that I have never met. If it wasn’t for the care and support and prayers of all those three-million-something people who signed our petition to bring me home, I don’t think I would have been home by then.

I have every faith in humanity. At the end of the day, it’s just friendship, love and care that remains. My husband always says that it took us a village to take me home. If it wasn’t for the love of our neighbours, family, friends, it wouldn’t have happened.

I have every faith that solidarity is the way forward.

♦