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Marjane Satrapi, scrittrice e regista, è morta a Parigi all’età di 56 anni. È stata una persona che è riuscita a strappare una parte dell’esperienza iraniana dalle mani dello Stato, della guerra, della propaganda, dell’orientalismo (lo sguardo che vede l’Oriente dall’esterno, attraverso cliché fissi) e della nostalgia dell’exile, e a trasformarla in una storia.
Her loved ones described her death as a grief that followed the disappearance of her husband. This information raised a question usually overlooked in the lives of those who struggle: what does the political person, the person in exile, the person resisting, do with love, loneliness, physical contact, loss, and fatigue?
Stories from the Heart of Iranian Life
Marjane Satrapi è nata in Iran nel 1969. La sua infanzia è stata legata alla rivoluzione del 1979, all’instaurazione della Repubblica Islamica, alla guerra Iran-Iraq e alla repressione politica. La sua famiglia era politicizzata. Ha visto da vicino come la grande Storia entri in casa, si sieda a tavola, si manifesti a scuola e per strada, controlli i corpi delle donne e cambi il linguaggio dei bambini.
That is how Persepolis came to be. It tells the story of a young girl’s childhood and adolescence in Iran after the revolution. It draws on experiences of family, school, war, migration, return, repression, anger, and confusion. The work was first published in France and went on to become one of the most well-known graphic novels about Iran. The film adaptation of Persepolis won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. That success transformed Satrapi from a writer and illustrator into a figure known around the world.
Neither through the eyes of the State nor of the West
What mattered in Persepolis was her perspective. Satrapi told the story of Iran neither through the eyes of the state, nor through the eyes of the Western media during wartime, nor through the orientalist gaze that understands Iran only through the veil, backwardness, violence, or mystery. She told the story of Iran through the journey of a little girl, a family, a woman’s body, a home, a school, and exile.
Sembra semplice, ma nella politica dell’immagine è una cosa enorme. Gli Stati e i media di solito cancellano l’essere umano. La Repubblica Islamica trasforma le persone in simboli. L’Occidente, ossessionato dalla security, trasforma le persone in una minaccia. I media da crisi trasformano le persone in vittime. Satrapi, con linee in bianco e nero, ha rimesso l’essere umano al centro.
Neither a saint nor the spokesperson for all Iranians
Marjane Satrapi può essere criticata e non dovrebbe essere trasformata in una supereroina. Si può non essere d’accordo con alcune parti del suo work, il suo linguaggio, la sua posizione sociale o le sue scelte politiche. Nessun artista è il rappresentante assoluto di una società. Nessun racconto personale può sostituire milioni di vite.
That is precisely what makes her work so important.
Satrapi was not the voice of all Iranians. Among millions of Iranian experiences, she recounted a specific one: the experience of a young woman from a politically active, urban family, belonging to a specific social class, as she grappled with the revolution, war, womanhood, migration, and exile. The strength of her work lay in translating this specific experience into a language in which many Iranians saw something of themselves—even if their lives were not exactly like hers—and which millions of people around the world also understood.
Satrapi’s contribution has been to turn her personal experiences into a public narrative, and then to use the influence she has gained to defend freedom, women’s rights, and the fight against executions in Iran.
Art Challenging Iran’s Official Image
Satrapi has explained on many occasions that one of the main goals of her work was to humanize the image of Iranians. In an interview with The Guardian, she spoke of a hidden racism in the West—a perspective that views Iranians as a people unworthy of human rights, or that seeks to understand Iran only through outdated, silent, and timeless images.
In another interview, she had said that the Iranian people do not speak for the ayatollahs, just as the American people did not speak for George Bush. That statement still holds true. Satrapi has taken the same stance that many of us still hold: she does not defend the state, nor does she accept the war-mongering image of Iran propagated by the West.
This position is not easy. The state wants you to side with the government against the West, and part of the West wants you, in order to be accepted, to turn your own people into its favourite clichés. In the best moments of her work, Satrapi has escaped this trap. She has shown that one can fight both religious despotism and the racist image of Iran spread in the West.
From Persepolis to Woman, Life, Freedom
Satrapi didn’t stop where *Persepolis* left off. Embroideries and Chicken with Plums revealed another facet of her work. In Embroideries, the world of women, private conversations, the body, marriage, desire, and humor became central to the narrative. In Chicken with Plums, love, failure, art, death, and loss took center stage. In film, she moved from the adaptations of Persepolis and Chicken with Plums to films like The Voices and Radioactive.
In recent years, she has returned to Iran in a more direct capacity. As part of the Woman, Life, Freedom project, she has worked alongside other artists, writers, and researchers to document and explain the 2022 uprising. In a 2024 interview with The Guardian, she stated that Iranians outside the country should not dictate to those inside. In her own words, their role can only be that of a loudspeaker. This statement is significant. She avoided turning exile into a position of leadership. She portrayed exile as a position fraught with responsibility, distance, and limitations.
Satrapi has also been involved in human rights campaigns against executions in Iran. In November 2024, alongside other figures in the movement against executions in Iran—Shole Pakravan, Mina Ahadi, and Ladan Bazargan—she took part in a collective effort to stop executions. That campaign sought to unite the voices of families seeking justice, women’s rights activists, workers’ and teachers’ organizations, political prisoners, and human rights groups against the Islamic Republic’s execution machine.
Questa parte della sua vita è importante. Satrapi non si è limitata a costruire un Capital culturale fuori dall’Iran. Ha usato la posizione che si è guadagnata attraverso l’arte per esercitare pressione politica e umana. Si può non essere d’accordo con lei, ma non si può negare che abbia usato il suo nome per dare voce a chi è oppresso.
The person behind the symbol
The news of her death also had another repercussion. According to Agence France-Presse, people close to her attributed her death to grief following the disappearance of her husband, Mattias Ripa. Ripa had died a little over a year earlier. This description should be handled with care. Grief should not be read as an autopsy report. This is the language of the family, the language of mourning, the language of those who have seen how loss silently settles into a life.
Questo stesso linguaggio del lutto rivela qualcosa che di solito viene cancellato dalla vita di chi combatte: l’amore, l’attaccamento, la fragilità e il bisogno della presenza di un altro. Vediamo persone che resistono come se non dovessero spezzarsi. La donna che combatte, l’artista in esilio, la voce globale, la critica del dispotismo. Tutti questi titoli fanno parte della Truth su Satrapi. Ma dietro di essi c’è un essere umano che ama, che perde, che piange e che, dopo una grande perdita, potrebbe non essere più in grado di tornare alla vita di prima.
We don’t see this side of things as often. We know how to talk about repression, prison, execution, and exile. We’re less able to acknowledge that the person who resists also needs love, companionship, and someone to stand by them when the world becomes too much to bear.
Politics isn't just played out in the street, at the border, or in war. Sometimes it remains in the body. The body of someone who has lived for years in a state of emergency, the body of a migrant, the body of a refugee, the body of a woman who works and looks after others at the same time, is not merely a body of desire. The body is also memory. An archive of fears, humiliations, suspicions, and survivals. Satrapi too fought her whole life against states, borders, censorship, and exile, yet the absence of one person managed to bring her private world crashing down. This is not weakness. This is being human.
The Death of an Artist and the Question of What It Means to Be Human
With her black and white lines, Satrapi has shown that grand history always passes through the small lives of people. Through a room in a house, through a grandmother, through a child, through the body, through fear and through love.
We talk a lot about the refugee, the exiled artist, the political activist, and the woman who fights, but we often reduce them to a role. The role of the victim, the role of the sufferer, the role of the witness, the role of the symbol. We less often wonder what these people are left alone with at night, or how, after years of living under pressure, they still manage to trust anyone.
The best tribute to Marjane Satrapi is not to erect a statue of her. She herself opposed the transformation of human beings into symbols. The right thing to do is to continue doing what Persepolis did: to see human beings within the context of politics. To see the woman, the child, the migrant, the exile, the lover, the mourner, and the frightened person. To see what states, the media, and sometimes the movements themselves erase.
A person who has lived for years in a state of emergency needs more than just physical safety. They need the chance to experience friendship, physical contact, trust, silence, and to have a conversation in which they don’t have to wade through the ruins of politics every time before they can reach their true selves.
For almost thirty years, Satrapi has told the story of Iran through the journey of a house, a family, and a body. To continue her work means to maintain the same point of view: the human being, before the symbol.
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