(CNN) — Soheila Sokhanvari’s retrospective “We Could Be Heroes…” takes its name from David Bowie’s 1977 classic “Heroes,” a song which has particular resonance for the Iranian born, UK-based artist. Like the two lovers separated by the Berlin Wall in Bowie’s song, Sokhanvari was separated from everything she knew and loved by the 1979 Revolution.

The experience inspired her vibrantly patterned miniature paintings which evoke a hazily remembered pre-revolutionary past where progressive and conservative values co-existed — albeit uneasily — and resurrects icons the Islamic Republic sought to destroy.