Iranian films are increasingly winning accolades and awards at international film festivals for their fresh treatment of humanist issues. In that context, Iranian painters, actors, and authors agree that instead of withering from two decades of isolation, Iranian culture has nurtured itself, as if in an incubator. Now it's blossoming. It's the beginning of the big happening. For years, art exhibitions of any kind were not tolerated.
Newspapers carry full pages of cultural events.
Tavoos's high quality of work has impressed critics from New York's Museum of Modern Art to China. Second-generation Iranians living in the United States, she says, have shown particular interest in Tavoos. They can't believe we have all this happening in Iran. Some argue that the blossoming of Iranian culture was inevitable after so many years under wraps, regardless of the political landscape. We have been so removed from the outside that Khatami just helped accelerate it with his openness.