Parastou Forouhar (born 1962 in Tehran, Iran) is an artist whose work explores themes of gender, identity, and political issues, particularly in relation to authoritarian regimes. She studied art at the University of Tehran from 1984 to 1990 and earned her MA from the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach, Germany, in 1994. Prior to the political murder of her parents in Iran in 1998, she permanently relocated to Germany—an event that profoundly shapes her artistic practice. Forouhar works across a variety of media, including site-specific installations, animations, digital drawings, photographs, and works on canvas. Her artistic style combines ornament, pattern, calligraphic form, and symmetry with a delicate aesthetic that starkly contrasts with the violence of her subject matter.

For over three decades, Parastou Forouhar has pursued a unique and sustained inquiry into the relationship between visual clichés and the mechanisms of power and control. By interrogating the expectations these clichés instantly evoke, her works only seemingly conform to them. In the Under the Banner series, they allude to aesthetic and cultural norms—ornamental orders, societal conventions, and the Other—yet beneath their surface, Forouhar subverts these assumptions, exposing dynamics of control and othering. At first glance, her drawings captivate with harmonious, patterned surfaces and calligraphic fluidity. Figures in fluid black lines emerge momentarily, only to recede into the unseen. A closer look, however, reveals unsettling detail: the intricate patterns are composed of tools of violence in phallic forms, while genderless bodies surface against seemingly benign backdrops, shattering the illusion of harmony. Here she deploys an overcoding of signs that produces an ironic rupture.

She has held numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including Butterfly Captured! at Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe (2022–2023); Limbo at Karin Sachs Galerie, Munich (2021); The Grass is Green, the Sky is Blue and She is Black at Museum Lindwurm, Stein am Rhein (2017); Kiss Me at Rose Issa Projects, London (2014); and Parastou Forouhar at RH Gallery, New York (2010) and Leighton House, London (2010). Her participation in group exhibitions includes The Fascination of Persia at Rietberg Museum, Zurich (2013); Agoraphobia at Azad Gallery, Tehran (2015); and Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2017).

Forouhar’s works are held in prestigious permanent collections such as the Queensland Art Museum, The British Museum, Belvedere in Vienna, the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, the Deutsche Bank Art Collection, and the Walker Art Center. In recognition of her work addressing displacement, gender, and cultural identity, she received the Sophie von La Roche Award in 2012 and the Gabriele Münter Prize in 2025.