Presentation Schedule
Visual Memory and Islamic Aesthetics in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (106240)
Saturday, 9 May 2026 15:45
Session: Poster Session
Room: Hall B5 Foyer
Presentation Type: Poster Presentation
This paper explores Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi as a modern visual narrative that reactivates the aesthetic logic of Persian miniature within contemporary Islamic literary imagination. Rather than approaching Persepolis solely as a graphic memoir or a political narrative, the paper argues that Satrapi’s work can be read as part of a longer visual-literary tradition rooted in Islamic aesthetics, particularly in the visual principles of Persian miniature painting. Persian miniature is characterised by flat spatial organisation, symbolic imagery, non-linear temporality, and the absence of realistic perspective. These features privilege meaning, memory, and contemplation over mimetic realism. This paper suggests that similar principles operate in Persepolis, where simplified black-and-white imagery, an episodic structure, and visually “static” scenes construct a narrative of cultural memory rather than linear historical progression. Through close reading and visual analysis of selected episodes from Persepolis, the paper examines how visual minimalism functions as an aesthetic strategy that transforms personal experience into collective memory. The analysis focuses on the interaction between image and text, the use of repetition and symbolic figures, and the representation of time as fragmented and cyclical. These narrative techniques resonate with the visual logic of Persian miniature, in which multiple temporal moments coexist within a single compositional space.
By situating Persepolis within the broader framework of Islamic visual aesthetics and intermedial studies, the paper challenges the conventional separation between classical Islamic art and contemporary graphic narratives. It argues that Satrapi’s work represents not a rupture with tradition, but a reconfiguration of inherited visual forms adapted to modern contexts of diaspora and memory.
Authors:
Sevinch Daukaeva, Kimyo International University, Uzbekistan
About the Presenter(s)
Ms Sevinch Daukaeva is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at Kimyo International University in Uzbekistan
See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule
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