The Courage to Be: Elahe Askari’s Journey Through Solitude, Storytelling, and Selfhood
From Cozy Corner with Hossein Nasiri – Episode 60
In this emotionally rich and thought-provoking episode of Cozy Corner, Hossein Nasiri welcomes Elahe Askari—a digital storyteller, painter, traveler, and independent spirit whose creativity flows not from comfort, but from courage. Her journey defies linear paths. It zigzags through banks and black boxes, through newborn photography studios and mountaintops, through loneliness and love, performance and silence. She is not merely a content creator; she is a narrator of existence.
What makes Elahe’s story so captivating is how deeply personal, and at the same time universal, it is. This is the story of a woman who doesn’t perform for applause—but for survival. A woman who paints clowns without masks. A woman who builds stories not to impress, but to express. To make sense of herself and the world.
From Bank Teller to Storyteller
It’s hard to imagine Elahe Askari behind a bank counter—but that’s exactly where her professional life began. As she recalls, working at a bank was rigid, repetitive, and oddly revealing. Behind that glass window, she saw more than account numbers and withdrawal slips. She saw people—lonely people, angry people, hurting people who simply needed someone to listen.
And she listened.
Those fragments of humanity stayed with her. They weren’t just encounters. They were unwritten stories, waiting for a voice. Years later, these stories would reappear—sometimes in her Instagram captions, sometimes in the eyes of the clowns she paints, and sometimes in the characters she meets on the road.
The Performance of Being: Theater, Hybridity, and Expression
Before content creation and travel vlogs, Elahe found her first creative liberation in theater. But as she explains, access to the stage wasn’t easy. Theater circles were tight-knit and academic, and she didn’t fit the mold. So, she created her own mold.
Instead of waiting for a role, she produced hybrid performances: layered works blending live music, video, and improvisational dialogue. These performances weren’t just shows; they were statements—of autonomy, of longing, of unfiltered emotion. “If I couldn’t get into the theater halls,” she says, “I’d bring theater into the gallery space.”
It’s a recurring pattern in Elahe’s life: wherever doors are closed, she builds new rooms.
Photography as Survival and Strategy
During her six years as the founder of Rabbit Studio, Elahe specialized in maternity and newborn photography—one of the most emotionally delicate and logistically demanding genres. Her approach was not simply aesthetic but empathetic. She captured the silent strength of motherhood, the fragility of life’s earliest days, and the hidden beauty in fatigue and resilience.
But she’s candid about her motivations. Photography wasn’t born from passion alone—it was also a survival skill. Elahe always believed in having a “plan B.” If one path grew cold, she’d light another. It’s this pragmatic creativity—equal parts heart and head—that defines much of her work.
The Pandemic as Portal: Enter Travel
When the pandemic shuttered her studio, she could have panicked. Instead, she pivoted. Drawing on her skills as a photographer and communicator, she packed her bags and began traveling alone—relearning her country, her perspective, and herself. Her Instagram page transformed into a living travel diary, mixing stunning imagery with raw reflection.
This wasn’t escapism. It was exploration in the deepest sense. She wasn’t searching for places—she was seeking stories. And every alleyway, metro ride, and mountain pass became a potential narrative. “Thousands have filmed these places,” she says, “but what makes my story mine is the lens through which I see.”
Painting the Clown Within
Perhaps the most startling turn in Elahe’s creative journey came through painting. Not from ambition, but necessity. After facing public pressure, political restrictions, and personal exile, Elahe was banned from working and traveling. Cut off from her platforms, her audience, her life’s rhythm—she turned inward.
She began painting clowns.
But not the kind with painted-on smiles or circus gimmicks. Her clowns are bare-faced, lonely, vibrant, soulful. Their only marker is a red nose. They laugh freely, cry without shame, and wander without needing a destination. They are vessels of solitude and vessels of truth. “They are me,” she says.
Each canvas became a conversation she couldn’t have out loud. The paint absorbed what her friends couldn’t hold—the grief, the confusion, the loss of identity. “When I couldn’t share my stories anymore,” Elahe says, “I poured them into my clowns.”
The Solitude That Shapes
Solitude, for Elahe, isn’t just a backdrop to her creativity—it’s the medium itself. “I love my solitude,” she explains, “but only when I know how to handle it.” Her solitude isn’t a passive withdrawal. It’s an active, aware state of being—often painful, sometimes liberating, always fertile.
She speaks of her time in solitary confinement not with melodrama, but with poetic clarity. “I thought I had died,” she admits. “That room felt like a grave.” And yet, she emerged from it with sharper vision, braver dreams, and a deeper refusal to let fear define her. If fear had once tried to end her, courage to live became her most radical response.
Independence: The Non-Negotiable Flame
Independence, Elahe tells us, is not just her lifestyle—it is her identity. It’s what she’s fought for in her family, in society, and in her relationships. And it’s also what has made her vulnerable to misunderstanding and loss. “People admire the idea of an independent woman,” she says, “until it threatens their control.”
That tension—between independence and intimacy, freedom and belonging—appears everywhere in her work. In her travels, she values the ability to drift. In her paintings, the clowns stand alone. In her performances, the audience never holds the script.
For Elahe, to be truly independent is not to reject connection, but to choose how and when to connect. It’s the right to define her own rhythm, even when it goes against the music others expect.
Strangers, Stories, and the Sacred Space of Travel
One of the most profound ideas Elahe shares is this: strangers often handle our sadness better than friends. They have no expectations, no memory of the “happy you.” They meet you in the now.
This is why she prefers hostels over hotels, local buses over private cars. She doesn’t want filters—neither literal nor metaphorical. She wants truth. And truth, in her experience, is more likely to show up in the quiet company of strangers.
Traveling solo allows her to become more herself—to observe more keenly, to feel more deeply, to write her own presence into places most people scroll past.
The Audience That Stayed
Despite everything—despite algorithm shifts, platform bans, and the silence of old friends—one thing remained: her audience. The people who remembered her bank stories. The ones who followed her evolution from theater to photography to solo vlogging. The ones who, even when she disappeared, waited.
They remember. They comment. They ask. And that, she says, has given her the strength to return again and again.
Because Elahe’s artistry isn’t about numbers or fame. It’s about connection. She tells stories not just to be heard, but to hold space—for herself, and for anyone who has ever felt too much, been too alone, or loved too deeply.
A Circus Without Masks
Elahe’s dream is simple: a circus of clowns who wear no masks. A community where sadness isn’t stigmatized, where independence is honored, where dreams aren’t laughed at but lived. This isn’t metaphor—it’s a life philosophy.
Her clowns are metaphors, yes—but also real people. They’re us. You. Me. The version of ourselves we hide when we fear judgment. Through her art, she reminds us: it’s okay to cry, it’s okay to walk alone, and it’s okay to wear your red nose with pride.
Final Reflections: The Artist Who Lived
In the final moments of this moving conversation, Elahe shares a simple truth: “I think I’ve become a better version of Elahe.”
Not happier. Not more successful. But better. Braver. More honest. Less afraid.
And maybe that’s the truest measure of a storyteller—not how many stories they’ve told, but how many they’ve lived.
Elahe Askari has lived hers fully, and through the Cozy Corner lens, she’s passed that life onto us.
🎧 Watch Episode 60 of “Cozy Corner with Hossein Nasiri” featuring Elahe Askari on YouTube, or listen on your favorite podcast platform. Discover how pain becomes painting, how silence becomes story, and how solitude—when understood—can become the most powerful form of self-love.
