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To illustrate the oppression of Iranian women, Iranian-Australian designer Nila Rezaei of RK Collective, Sydney, Australia, has created stadium seats out of headscarves anonymously donated by women from Iran. In that country, appearing without a head covering in public or on social media can be punished with fines, travel or online activity bans, and even prison sentences. The choice to create stadium seats in particular reflects that women are generally not allowed to go to stadiums there.
“The stadium seat has become a symbol of limitation and suppression,” Rezaei explains. “To give voice to those often silenced, we launched a collective call to action, inviting Iranian women globally to donate their unwanted headscarves for this transformative project.”
The RK Collective team combines the headscarves with recycled polymers and then creates the seats through lamination and compression molding. More than 500 scarves have come in from about 400–450 individuals.
Inspiration came from the Women, Life, Freedom movement, which gained global attention after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 after being arrested for so-called “improper” clothing. The Crafted Liberation seats will be on display in Australia and Europe in 2025, and RK Collective is seeking partnerships to display them in public spaces. Each exhibition will be different, with the number of seats being site-specific.
“This is about celebrating strength and creating meaningful change through design,” Rezaei says. “We are hoping that through ongoing conversation and through the use of design and material innovation, we can collectively create change and the future free of oppression.”