>> For me, reacting to those memories in the paintings is somehow a way, also, to cope with often traumatic experiences.

>> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio, Iranian artist Arghavan Khosravi frames freedom in her paintings.

Then, playwright Matthew López on his Tony-winning drama, The Inheritance, and gay life in a New York ravaged by AIDS.

>> My generation, having grown up in the shadow of AIDS, are now old enough to really have lived enough of our lives to understand what was lost by it.

>> BOWEN: Plus two Indigenous artists come together for Each/Other.

And how two dancers literally leap into action in the name of public art.

♪ ♪ It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ First up, as a young woman in Iran, as an immigrant to this country, artist Arghavan Khosravi has been subjected to the restrictions women face.

But on the canvas, she renders it all through fanciful and magical layers.

On the occasion of her first museum show, I recently met the artist at the Currier Museum of Art.

>> I like this idea of having these, like, whimsical gardens, and then having some other things, a little bit disturbing.

>> BOWEN: In her paintings, as in her own life, Iranian artist Arghavan Khosravi sees two Irans.

First, there's the one she found inside her family home.

>> We had a lot of freedom.

I was lucky that I was born and raised in a family that we are culturally educated, and gave me the space to, to do whatever I want.

>> BOWEN: And then there is the public Iran, where life is heavily restricted, especially for women.

>> When we go to school, we had to wear hijab, and there are things that you must do to comply with those rules.

>> BOWEN: You couldn't be yourself.

>> I think that's too, too extreme to say, that you couldn't be yourself; I could.

But just the modified version, or more contained.

>> BOWEN: So in this, her first museum exhibition, we find flowering trees, sumptuous textiles, and birds with widespread wings.

But we also find women diminished, faces obscured, sometimes forcibly restrained.

The work, Khosravi says, all comes from memory.

They're usually, mostly, not very positive, so for me, reacting to those memories in, in the paintings is somehow a way, also, to cope with those traumatic, often traumatic experiences.

>> BOWEN: And none of these women are ever you?

>> No, I never, intend to have these women as self-portraits, but I have some of the characteristics in common with me, like the hair color, eye color, to some extent the skin tone.

I want to refer to my own race.

>> BOWEN: Khosravi left Iran seven years ago to attend art school in the United States.

And as an immigrant, she's no longer free to travel home.

But on the canvas, she dwells in a magical realm says Samantha Cataldo, the show's curator.

>> There's a real element of like, a dream space, or, like, a moment frozen in time, but it's rendered in really sharp detail.

And so you kind of have that push-pull of reality and surreality in it.

>> BOWEN: In her latest work, Khosravi's paintings enter our space, taking on sculptural qualities as they protrude from the wall, their weight literally suspended before us.

>> You're confronted with the work, but not, of course, in a bad way; it's brought to you and it kind of beckons you and invites you to investigate all of its layers.

>> BOWEN: In a visual language Khosravi has steadily cultivated.

Look closely and you'll find her paint often sparkles, a nod to the precious, like Middle Eastern oil, she says, that comes at the expense of democracy.

The classical sculpture represented throughout her work speaks to both patriarchy and notions of human perfection given over to decay.

>> So to put that very loaded imagery into a work that also includes things like more Eastern traditions, like contemporary fashion photography.

It sets up this interesting contrast and contradiction of ideals.

>> BOWEN: Khosravi also returns time and again to historic Persian miniature painting.

They're images she was raised on, but in her versions, she moves men to the side.

>> I see that women have a secondary role, or not very important roles in those scenes, and in my own work, I want to subvert that idea and give women more presence than what we have seen throughout art history.

>> BOWEN: History is literally woven into Khosravi's work as she paints around, over, and through handmade textiles her father has sent from Iran.

>> BOWEN: You come in and you really are having a conversation with the artist who came before.

>> Yeah, yeah, because I, like, I decided this color palette, because of the color palette that the textile had.

Yeah, it's an interesting dialogue.

>> BOWEN: And choice, which Arghavan Khosravi, now a long way from home, will never take for granted.

You have what you talk about in these paintings, you have freedom, full freedom.

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And in contrast with what I'm saying in the paintings, I have freedom to say whatever I want to say.

♪ ♪ >> Tell me the name of one of your closest friends.

>> Tristan.

>> (sniffles) Imagine that Tristan is dead-- name another.

>> Jasper.

>> Jasper... is also dead.

>> Jason.

>> Jason has been St. Vincent's for two weeks, the toxoplasmosis has left him with dementia.

>> BOWEN: That's a scene from The Inheritance, which just opened at SpeakEasy Stage Company.

In New York, the show won the 2020 Tony Award for Best Play for its story of New York gay men in the wake of the AIDS crisis.

But playwright Matthew López's inspiration might come as a surprise.

He took his cues from the classic 1910 E.M. Forster novel Howards End.

Matthew López, thank you so much for being with us.

>> Hi, it's a pleasure.

>> BOWEN: So tell me about what it was in reading Howards End as a very young man that sat with you to become The Inheritance.

>> So I saw the film first in '93, and that was the first time I saw a movie that was so different from the world that I knew that still somehow spoke to me in some way.

>> Couldn't you get it renewed?

>> I beg your pardon?

>> The lease, the lease on your house.

>> The characters, the vivacity of them.

And then my mother, who was a schoolteacher, she got me the book and I really sort of fell even more in love with it through the writing, through E.M. Forster's voice.

And, you know, it took me a long time to sort of figure out why that particular book resonated.

You know, I was this Puerto Rican kid from Florida.

(laughs) And then when it was... upon reading that E.M. Forster was gay, that he was closeted all his life, that he was only out to his, his most intimate friends, that I started to understand that it, that Howards End was the creation of a gay man.

And I think there was something connecting me to him through that.

I think that I could, without knowing anything about myself or him, there was a vibration that I picked up on, and it felt like he was speaking to me.

>> BOWEN: Well, we'll go back to that in a moment.

But I'm wondering, this is a moment in which a lot of people are looking back at the 1980s and the AIDS crisis, as you very much do, of course, in this piece.

What is it about this time now looking at that time?

>> It's perhaps the right amount of time to gain perspective, both... by those who experienced it, and those who were too young to.

I think that it's possible that, that my generation, having grown up in the shadow of AIDS, are now old enough to really have lived enough of our lives to understand what was lost by it, to understand what it must have felt like to be imperiled by it, to feel always in danger.

And, you know, someone who was born in 1977, I was a child when all of this was going on.

And now I'm a grown man with, who's lived longer than many of the people who died of AIDS, and I think I have the requisite perspective now, as a gay man, to understand it fully.

And I think maybe others do as well.

>> BOWEN: What was it like to live in this history, to live in this world?

I was struck to read that your husband could tell which character you were working on, which character you were writing, by your moods when you came home.

What does that tell us?

>> That I am, that I'm probably a bit of an empath as I, as I write.

(laughs) >> Why do you need to tell your story?

>> To understand it.

To understand myself.

>> Writing this play took so much out of me, it required so much time from me, it took emotional, mental, and creative outlay and, yeah, you know, every day was a new adventure in the writing process of this play.

I felt like I was sort of chasing after something different from anything I'd ever written before.

And for any writer who's listening to this, they know how exciting that feeling is.

And, yeah, and so much of the play is also, you know, the structure of the play, and the characters are based on Howards End.

But so much of the the real experience of the characters, the actual experience of just feelings or fears, they're based on my life.

And I've sworn I'd never tell what bits, but I put so much of my life in the play, and so there were so many days when I was just reliving those experiences, and some of them were wonderful, and some of them were awful.

But it... yeah, it felt, it feels like it was worth it.

>> BOWEN: Is this something as a writer that you felt that you were building toward or that you knew in some way you had a responsibility to do at some point, which was to really look inward and put yourself in the piece?

>> On this one, I knew it was inevitable.

And on this one, I knew I was ready.

My other plays, you know, have bits of me, or bits of people that I know in them.

You know, I have a play about my, about my family and their experiences making the West Side Story movie in 1959, that comes from family lore, you know.

This is a whole other order of magnitude.

This was, this was me, this was me really sort of writing about my addiction and my alcoholism for the first time, really, this is the first time I ever wrote honestly about my own trauma and in ways that I, again, can, sort of, put in the play without actually sort of having to sort of specifically talk about.

But I was prepared for what it was going to take.

>> BOWEN: And how is it to experience it now hearing how you've talked about it, how difficult it was, and I can only imagine what the process was like to then relive it quite frequently as you're seeing productions, and it's out in the world and shared in the world now.

>> It is different now.

I can look at it just as a piece of writing, I can look at it as a creation that I made and I've really sort of allowed it to be a piece that I've created.

And I was just in Munich last weekend seeing it there in German, and that was such a thrill to sort of watch the play in a language I don't speak, and to hear an audience engage with it, laugh at what I assume are the exact same jokes.

(laughter) It's not, it's like the thing about childbirth, you know, it's like, you love your children, and you don't think about how painful it was to have them.

And I think that is the sort of same way with writing.

>> BOWEN: That must be so interesting, too, to see, especially to be at a place like Munich, where you, where it might seem so different, but to know that what you've written is so universal at the end of the day.

>> It was so very reassuring to watch the audience have the exact same reaction that the audiences in London and New York did.

I think that it really helped me understand where this play may sit within the human experience.

>> Being gay doesn't feel remarkable anymore.

It's like, "Oh, you're gay, ho-hum, what other tricks can you do?"

>> BOWEN: And finally, and I said we would return to Forster, do you think about him often?

Do you think about how his life and his work now lives in this world through yours?

>> Yeah, he's, he's deeply important to me.

He has been from that, that day in March of...

I guess it was 1993, when I saw the... James Ivory's film, and he's only grown in importance to me.

You know, we worked very closely with the Foresters estate on this play.

And I went to Cambridge and met with the librarian at King's College, who is the... who is the estate, basically, representing-- Forster left his literary estate to King's College, and... and Peter, the librarian, brought me into the small room, and he, he... first he showed me Forster's rooms and he walked me around the campus of King's.

Then he brought me into this old room and he showed me the original handwritten manuscript of Howards End, as well as Forster's, what they call the Locked Diary.

And I sat in a room with these two documents for hours, and I just... communed with Morgan, you know, and it was a real, it was a real treat, a real honor.

He means everything to me.

>> BOWEN: Well, thank you again for being with us today.

>> Thanks so much, Jared.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Life is a cabaret in the hands of MassOpera.

The group's evening of song among the events to see in Arts This Week.

Monday, the Boston University Arts Initiative continues its Indigenous Voices in America series with Seeing Turtle Island Through an Artist's Lens, featuring Aquinnah Wampanoag artist Elizabeth James-Perry.

Artist Stephen Hamilton brings together Western and African art traditions in his installation titled Between the River and the Forest.

Experience the work at Regis College Fine Arts Center Wednesday.

Thursday, MassOpera's The Mirror Cabaret opens at City Winery Boston.

La Bohème and Rent.

Romeo and Juliet versus West Side Story.

Catch an evening of opera and musical theater marriage.

The Museum of Russian Icons shows how art, religion, and politics intersect in its latest exhibition.

See Images of Atheism Friday.

Saturday at Symphony Hall, don't miss renowned cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and his sister, pianist Isata, as part of the Celebrity Series of Boston.

>> BOWEN: Artists Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger often call on others in the making of their artwork.

The result is a layered sense of community.

At the Peabody Essex Museum, they've come together themselves.

Their exhibition wraps up on May 8, so here again a story we first broadcast in February.

There is a she-wolf at the Peabody Essex Museum.

Angular and alert, she is strength.

With large, round eyes, she is warmth.

And with a pelt of bandannas, embroidered with messages from people all over the world, she is all of us.

>> Each one of those bandannas, and handling them, it's almost like, like visiting with a person.

>> There's something really nice about being able to, like, hold and carry the weight of, of our togetherness.

>> BOWEN: Artists Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger are the two Indigenous artists who came together themselves to create the she-wolf.

Titled Each/Other, it was constructed in a Portland, Oregon, studio during the pandemic.

And as you began to collaborate, what was that process like?

>> You know, it was initially a little bit like a, maybe like a blind date.

I mean, I think that both Cannupa and I are artists in which we share kind of social engagement in our practices.

>> BOWEN: Much of what you see here is the work of many hands, the result of each artist's invitation for people to step forward and help, from expressing themselves on bandannas to sharing biography in blankets.

>> I did contribute a blanket that was gifted to me by one of my best friends from college when I had my son.

>> BOWEN: Karen Kramer is a contributor to Watt's Blanket Stories sculptures.

She's also the show's co-curator.

Everything we find here, she says, is part of a robust dialogue the artists have with their audience.

>> There is a current of activism that is running through each object in the exhibition.

And then there's also a sense of activeness, that the artists are engaging between the viewer and the artwork, so there's this sort of feedback loop that's happening.

>> BOWEN: In Watt's sculptures, that reach to the sky like totem poles, she layers individual stories in these blankets.

They're poignant, she says, for being the objects that wrap us both when we enter the world and when we leave it.

In other work, Watt convenes regular sewing circles, where words exchanged end up embroidered.

>> I like to say, "I set the table, "and then what's created in that space is created by everybody sitting down and sharing in conversation."

>> BOWEN: In her work titled Companion Species, Watt contemplates what the world would look like if we placed ourselves on the same plane as animals.

>> I was listening to Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On."

>> ♪ Mother, Mother ♪ ♪ There's too many of you crying ♪ >> The very first call, of course, is, "Mother, Mother," but then I started thinking about how, like, if the call continued beyond Brother, Brother, Sister, Sister, asking this question about how we're related and knowing that there's always going to be difference in the world, but, like, figuring out those places where we can come together.

>> I'm here today to show everyone out there who's willing to watch how to build mirror shields for the people who are protecting the water at Standing Rock Reservation.

>> BOWEN: Standing Rock and the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline is where Cannupa Hanska Luger brought people together in 2016 as part of his Mirror Shield Project.

The shields both protected protesters from the water sprayed on them in frigid temperatures, and forced the police wielding water hoses to face themselves.

>> I was, like, I need it to be able for anybody to make, and so I made a video how to create, put it out using social media platforms, and the response from the public surprised me.

And I think by creating these sorts of prompts, it allows the population to move towards accomplice, versus just an ally, versus just sending thoughts and prayers.

>> BOWEN: He used social media again for this sculpture, asking people to send him clay beads for the creation of a portrait honoring missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, queer, and trans relatives.

There are more than 4,000 beads here.

>> Letters would come in with the beads, in these cases, stated, you know, "We've made you 15, 16 beads.

One of the beads represents my sister," you know?

"One of them represents my mom, my auntie," you know?

So there was, there was a, there was a cathartic experience in the process of creating a prompt for people to participate that is greater than being a number.

>> BOWEN: This is all why Luger considers the word "art" not a noun, but a verb.

>> It's not about the objects, it's about the process, and the process is, is held not in museums, but in the minds and in the muscles of the people who make the work.

>> BOWEN: And Marie Watt points out that in fact, in Indigenous languages, there is no word for "art" at all.

>> If we look back far enough into our communities, we'll see where this expressive compulsion is a part of what it means to be human.

>> BOWEN: Like how we can be inherently drawn to the belly of a she-wolf whose DNA we can all recognize.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Finally now, the pandemic presented an opportunity for a pop-up pas de deux.

We head to Florida, where the Miami City Ballet made a turning point-- launching a series of public dance performances.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (music ends) (applause) ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week, how the Museum of Fine Arts rescued a retrospective of the late painter Philip Guston from the clutches of controversy.

Plus we go behind the scenes of the deliciously demented drama Don't Eat the Mangos.

As always, you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter, @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

We leave you now with the MFA's new exhibition, Turner's Modern World.

It reveals how 18th and 19th century British painter J.M.W.

Turner used his work to draw attention to the issues he saw plaguing society, like abuse of power, pollution, and bloody wars.

A show nearly five years in the making, it's on view until July 10.

I'm Jared Bowen, thanks for joining us.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪