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Iran's new protest wave is unfolding in the shadow of 2022, when artists helped turn "Woman, Life, Freedom" into a cultural uprising and paid a long-term price in arrests, work bans, and exile. In 2025–26, many of those same figures continue to shape the movement symbolically, but systematic targeting of prominent creatives has pushed much current artistic participation into lower-visibility, fragmented, and often anonymous forms.

From Cultural Uprising to Mass Persecution
During the 2022 protests, musicians, filmmakers, actors and visual artists played a pivotal role in transforming street unrest into a cultural revolt, generating anthems, images and narratives that travelled far beyond Iran's borders. Human rights research documents that in 2022 alone more than 100 artists were arrested or prosecuted, facing charges framed as "propaganda against the system", "national security" offences, or "insulting Islamic values", often accompanied by torture, denial of due process and bans on artistic work.

Protest musicians such as Toomaj Salehi and other rappers became icons of defiance and then prime targets. Salehi endured repeated detention and solitary confinement, including 252 days in isolation, alongside torture allegations documented by UN experts. In April 2024, he received a death sentence for "corruption on Earth," but Iran's Supreme Court overturned the ruling on June 22, 2024, finding it "excessive and contrary to Iranian law." The reversal reflected both legal grounds and substantial international pressure: two weeks before the court decision, Salehi received the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent at the Oslo Freedom Forum, and global advocates including UN experts demanded his immediate release. Though his death sentence was lifted, he remains imprisoned on separate charges.

High-profile cinema and television figures, including Taraneh Alidoosti and Katayoun Riahi, were detained, interrogated or banned from working after appearing without hijab or publicly supporting protests, while others were driven into exile under sustained harassment.

Instruments of Repression: Committees, Ministries, and Courts
After 2022, Iranian authorities formalized pressure on celebrities through secret or semi-formal committees that coordinated with the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to punish dissenting public figures. In April 2023, BBC Persian obtained leaked government documents proving the existence of a classified "Celebrity Task Force" established September 22, 2022, just six days after protests began. Chaired by Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili, the committee targeted 141 well-known figures with tax investigations and punitive "restrictions according to the law." A second document dated September 26, 2022, shows the task force was made permanent and renamed the "Celebrities Committee," with oversight split among the culture ministry, intelligence ministry, sports ministry, and Revolutionary Guards' intelligence apparatus.

Measures against artists have included cancellation of contracts, withdrawal of state-linked production deals, travel bans, passport confiscation, asset seizure, tax investigations, forced confessions and exclusion from billboards and state media, creating a powerful chilling effect. Courts have backed this machinery with broadly defined "security" and morality provisions, enabling prosecutors to recycle the same charges against artists across different disciplines while signalling that artistic visibility itself is politically suspect.

Present Participation: Visible Absence, Hidden Presence
The December 2025–January 2026 uprising, driven by economic collapse and accumulated political grievances, has produced large-scale protests in dozens of cities. By January 6, 2026, security forces had killed at least 27–36 protesters and arrested over 2,000, including hundreds of children. Yet early arrest lists compiled by rights groups still feature mainly students, local organisers and ordinary citizens, not the recognisable names of major musicians or film stars. Names include architecture students, industrial design students, high school students as young as 14–17, teachers, and shopkeepers, but no established cultural figures.

News coverage likewise emphasises casualties, economic triggers and regime violence rather than specific cultural figures, suggesting that prominent artists are acting with far greater caution or that documentation of their role is lagging events. Explicit warnings to influencers, activists and online businesses against sharing protest content, backed by criminal law, economic pressure and threats to family members, further deter high-profile endorsements. Security forces made phone calls warning citizens they would face arrest if they participated in protests, and intelligence agencies contacted students and families with explicit threats of "arrest, expulsion, or disciplinary action."

In this climate, many artists appear to be participating through anonymous visual work, encrypted circulation of music and graphics, quiet support to student networks and signal-boosting from exile rather than the overt, name-attached interventions seen in 2022.

Cultural Memory as Infrastructure for Resistance
Even if new artistic leaders of the 2025–26 protests are harder to name, the cultural infrastructure built in 2022 remains central to the current moment. Songs such as "Baraye" by Shervin Hajipour, which won the Grammy Award for Best Song for Social Change in 2023 and accumulated over 40 million views, continue to serve as the emotional soundtrack of the uprising. Protest rap tracks and visual iconography of unveiled women, martyrs and anti-regime graffiti continue to circulate across encrypted apps, diaspora media and informal channels inside Iran.

International advocacy increasingly frames Iranian artists as human rights defenders, calling for protection, asylum pathways and accountability for those persecuting creatives. The Artistic Freedom Initiative has recommended that governments "recognize Iranian artists as human rights defenders on a par with activists, lawyers and journalists," and has called for humanitarian visas to enable relocation of artists fleeing persecution. As of 2024, the organization represents 53 Iranian artists and activists in the process of leaving Iran due to repression fears.

The absence of named artists in early arrest data should be read not as withdrawal, but as evidence of heightened risk and a strategic shift towards more concealed yet enduring forms of artistic resistance. The fate of 2022's cultural protagonists, some imprisoned, some exiled, many under surveillance, remains firmly tied to the evolving 2026 protest landscape, shaping both what artists can safely do and how their contributions are documented and remembered.

Key Sources:

When Repression Silences the Stage: Iran's Artists in 2025–26

In 2022, Iranian artists were cultural icons of the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, and over were 100 arrested, prosecuted, tortured. Leaked government documents reveal how authorities formalized persecution: a secret "Celebrity Task Force" coordinated mass work bans, asset seizures, and tax investigations.

As economic crisis now triggers a new uprising across dozens of Iranian cities, prominent artists have vanished from arrest records. Why? Heightened risk. Systematic surveillance. Strategic shift to encrypted channels and anonymous resistance.

Yet the infrastructure they built endures: "Baraye”, the Grammy-winning protest anthem, still circulates. Unveiling imagery. Anti-regime graffiti. The voices may be hidden, but the cultural resistance persists.

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Iran's Artist Uprising: From Visible Icons to Strategic Silence

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