Ashura illustrates a deeply religious yearly event where Shia
Muslims gather to mourn the tragic death and martyrdom of Imam Huseyn during the 7th-century battle of Karbala.
Iman’s fascination with the event began when she read an excerpt from the novel Ali and Nino by Kurban Said, first
published in 1937, which tells of a romance between a Muslim Azerbaijani boy and Christian Georgian girl in Baku
in the years 1914–1920. Iman says of the passage in the book that inspired her: “The scene described Ali getting
hypnotized by the shouts of men on the street beating themselves on the back with their fists or metal chains, and
running outside to join them. The excerpt was written so beautifully that I became fascinated by Ashura, watching
archive footage and researching it”. Iman took elements from video and photographic imagery of an Ashura taking
place in a mosque in Nardaran, Azerbaijan in 2014. The artist intends this to be the first in a series of canvases on the
same topic.