 I am a theatre director based in Beijing, China. And I'm visiting Oslo on this artist-in-residence program arranged by Safe Muse. Hello. Hello. Nice meeting you. Very nice meeting you too. Welcome here to the city hall of Oslo. I'm an actress primarily, but I've also been head of the National Theatre, artistic director at the National Theatre for ten years to get all together. And I've been minister of culture for one and a half year, fighting for the importance of cultural dialogue and that's what we are having. I've been working very hard to establish and develop the Ipsen Festival. Did you work with Ipsen? We did Ghosts 2.0. Basically it's a performance set in contemporary China. We used Ipsen's Ghosts to examine, you know, what are the counterpart situations and characters in contemporary China. In Chinese theatre, you know, it's very difficult to face the harsh situation in general and people do not want to face it and the regulations do not want you to face it or to be critical in any sense. Culture is not to be critical in many people's views, but I want it to be critical. The imagery, the symbolism we had on the stage were so shocking. It said a lot of direct things that I wouldn't dare to say in this conversation. You do say it aloud with body, with the set in combination with poetic text. You know, self-censorship is everywhere. You want to, you know, censor yourself before it reaches your boss and the boss also censors before it goes to the public. Then through the layers and layers of self-censorship, what's to be shown to the audience actually would be reduced. So sometimes it's a game to be played with your audience and censorship. It's a complicated, you know, net work of meanings. So you want to be safe in front of the censorship and you also want to be understood by your audience, which is not an easy job, have to, you know, hide your things somewhere but people still can't get it. I think it's great that we have this conversation just in this town hall of Oslo where our female mayor invited us for co-film before we had this talk and she's much supporting the freedom of speech and this system of dialogue. In China you would never expect to meet the former Minister of Culture and the current city mayor in a, you know, face-to-face manner. It's only us, not a huge meeting where the mayor greets a hundred artists. I see a human in here. My knowledge of government buildings is that it wants to keep away from its people. People are afraid of the government and the government is afraid of its people. Then you do not want to put the two things together to complicate situations. Then, you know, here it seems very accessible and nobody is afraid of anybody. That itself is very impressive for me. And also this portrait of the king sort of surprised me because obviously it's not in straightforward realistic style and with a face in shadow and in a not so straightforward way of being handsome. You know, I was just surprised that this kind of work could be commissioned and displayed in such a formal way. They would be considered blasphemy and insult to the royal family in some countries. So this definitely shows the appreciation of artistic values, alternative styles and also the freedom of artistic expression. This is just unthinkable for me. But people in Norway discuss these paintings as well. Some people don't like them, think the king looks not like that and he is much more beautiful, but the king and queen themselves they really appreciate artistic view also on them. You can tolerate different styles. You can tolerate different opinions. When people don't disagree, they say it out loud and you also talk about your opinions out loud. That's what we call a society. You know, I want to quote the now national hero, Dr. Li Wenliang. For dying, he said this, a healthy society should have more than one voice. You know, that's maybe common sense to some countries but that's what we need in some others. Tolerance is extremely important in all aspects. Tolerance of being different, different sexes, different meanings, different people, old and young. That's what it's all about in the end. Totally. You know, I do not speak whatever I want, even if I'm in Oslo because there could be consequences if I go back to China. Especially, you know, I'm a bit afraid of saying things out loud from the camera. I guess in some countries in the world, the risk is just simply too high. Not only for the activists and artists, but for anybody to speak out in any forms. Freedom of speech is the basic for everything. You want to create new stuff. You want to be innovative, provocative. You need freedom. You need the free space where you can wonder and think and challenge and criticize. That's the very basics of creating arts. You have to have that first. Then maybe the result is you come up with something completely new or maybe you come up with something not so interesting. But the first and foremost, you have to have something that sets you free. I'm from the first generation of Norwegian extreme metal. So my first band was Cadaver, which was releasing its debut album in 1990. So that means we did that before you guys were born. Yes. What was it like growing up in Iran and how did you get into music? I grew up in a family that actually my father was a kind of type of religious guy. And my mom was into music. So there had been a little bit of struggle there for me always. But at the same time, my father was a fan of traditional music, like Persian traditional music. So I've been seeing my father playing instruments and all of that. But since I grew up, my most biggest impact that made me to get into this music was Link. I grew up in a metal class family that art was very important in it. And my dad was a rock music fan, Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix. And I used to listen to them with him. And the first time that I heard it, it just got me like, I was like, I don't know what they're doing, man. But I just want to do this. So I just begged my mom to please buy me drums. And she was like, are you kidding me? We're living in an apartment and it's just too loud. So just second best thing was playing guitar. Yeah. That's the magic. When I was growing up, shows we wouldn't play in normal venues. There was no venues that would allow music like this. So it was very underground. There was a very different environment also for us in Norway. The topic in school, which now is all kinds of religions and ethics and stuff. Now they will learn about everything. But we had to pray in the morning and sing songs to praise God. And when we left school, we had to praise God again. And this upbringing certainly led me faster into being anti-religion than anything else. Now this is a thing with religious oppression. This is a fact that, for example, Islamic Republic of Iran doesn't understand that religious oppression makes people to lose their religion faster. Even the people who believe in it, like deeply or pure or for no kind of like pretending or hypocrisy, even they lose it as well. So at what point did you realize that what you were doing was leading you to trouble in your country? The music that we're making with the approach that we have, which is political and like very criticizing against organized religion. We knew that it's very risky and we knew that one day we will meet with the authorities. So our music was very like talking about the stuff that is happening in our society. In 2015, after we released our second album, Pursuit of Dreams, the music that we make has a political theme in it, most of the songs. So it didn't really sit well with the government, so of course it showed up. I was at home, was 8 in the morning. I was arrested inside of our house. They had warrants and everything. And waiting for a trial. And in our first trial, they gave us six years, maximum sentence for blasphemy and something that would be interpreted as doing propaganda against the state through our music. And I was 21 back then, unless I was 19. So even prison is not, it's pretty notorious. It's basically a place that the government keeping the politicals. But still we were like going through this and we stopped music and everything because we had bigger things to fight for, which was a freedom. Long story short, we were in a solitary confinement for three months. And then we were transferred to the public sector of prison. We were there for another 15 months. And waiting for a trial, so we were released temporarily from jail. So I left Iran. I was living in Turkey. And I came to Norway in December of 2018, seven months after me. Arash also came over. And while we were here, they gave me 12 years and six months in jail. So they doubled up my sentence from six to 12 years and a half. Plus 74 lashes with additional charges. Especially nowadays, artists are very important to support this movement and just give it all they have. Just be the voice for voiceless. People just want to live. They just want the regime to be gone. The circle of tyranny just became like tighter. And it's just really hard for people to stand that. So yeah, people are protesting. Our generation and the generation after us are the ones that are really doing it in the streets. Revolution is not a project, it's a process. So it takes time. Sometimes I've played with people that have no language in common with. And then we can still play together these 12 communications. Something that really touches me. My mother was singing always. She was in love with music, but she didn't know that. She was working, cooking and cleaning. And she didn't know that she can be a great singer. So I grew up with this folk music. And singing is not difficult for me, but singing in my language. This is Hazara song. It's difficult to sing that kind of music because my mother was like, no. And I have to question why no. And then when I was like adult, I'm thinking that she just wants to survive us. As a Hazara, you're under the pressure. And there is like 200 years that we are under the genocide. So we had a darker story. As a Muslim, at that time I chose to be a singer. If I go to hell, that's okay. When I couldn't say to my family that I'm doing guitar classes, it was hidden. You know, I hadn't any place to put my guitar in. One day my father broke that guitar. He broke it? Yeah. And my father didn't talk with me about that. No. I have always been thinking about that. What if I had a family that they support me about music, you know? I didn't have that experience and I have not still that experience. What made you have to leave Afghanistan and come here? I heard lots of news that they are targeting activists. And they are killing journalists and artists. And there is one journalist, a woman who was working in a government, and she told that I'm in a dangerous situation. So I'm just thinking that if I live here, they will kill me. I'm just very impressed about how strong you are. I don't feel that I'm strong. I'm just thinking that we have lots of women that they are living still in Afghanistan that they don't lose their hope. And it's so difficult right now to live there as a woman because all politicians that they are right now trying to normalize living with Taliban. You know, I'm always thinking as an Afghan female, you have nothing to lose. If women just think, just have time to sit and think about these things, they can understand that they are inside of manipulating, control ship from patriarchy, censorship, and they have nothing, you know? I think as a woman who grew up in Afghanistan, they even cannot about the dreams, you know? And it's unbelievable. How do you feel you can use your art to do something? I think art has a power. I just want to make that music, that people know that there is something that we are not talking about, that I don't want to censor, that I want to show these things. What I want to have, effect and influence on other people. Yeah. You know, this is what I want. I want to say something, tell something that they are hiding, they are taking from us, they are distracting us, you know? People want voices that are true and that are not making compromises. I can be a singer because they can take my voice and my thoughts and my feelings. To be an artist you should feel free, you should think freeway. We shouldn't just keep silence.