Shirin Neshat
by Kamin Mohammadi
this article appeared in BMed Magazine, summer 2004
On one black-and-white screen a man looks out, singing a traditional Persian song, behind him rows of similarly plainly-dressed men fill out an auditorium. On a screen opposite, a woman faces out, her head covered and her face in shadow. The auditorium is empty behind her. She opens her mouth and starts to sing, but her song is free form, almost a scream, a wail. It swoops and flips, becoming increasingly primal. The man on the opposite screen stares at her, fascinated, intrigued, shocked. He is quiet. In between the two screens stands the audience, those who come in their droves to see Shirin Neshat's work, caught between the two extremes, becoming a part of the video installations that have made Neshat famous.
Shirin Neshat likes what she calls 'the state of in-between', a space she invites her audiences to enter and share. As an artist and as an Iranian woman living in Manhattan, Neshat navigates in between many realities. Her video installations, such as Turbulent described above, are her most prolific medium. They are also how she has chosen to explore many of the issues of life as an Iranian woman (at the time of making Turbulent, women in Iran were not allowed to perform in public. They have since been allowed to hold concerts for other women only.).
Shirin Neshat was born in Iran in 1957. Like many Iranians at the time, as a teenager she was sent abroad to finish high school and attend college, arriving in the US in 1974. The Revolution of 1979 overtook her and she did not return to Iran for many years. It was in 1990 that she started to visit her country again and the changes that she saw there spurred her into making art. 'When I started to visit Iran,' she recalls, 'I was not active at all as an artist. And it wasn't my intention to go there and make art.' Rather, it was her fascination with - and fear of - the fiercely idealistic nature of Iran as an Islamic Republic that begged to be made sense of. 'I wanted to explore the subject of Revolution, of martyrdom,' says Neshat, 'so I made a series of photographs that were really for my personal use.'
The photographs became a series called 'Women of Allah', first exhibited in 1997. The powerful black and white images show close-ups of a veiled Neshat – a hand here, a pair of feet there, a face – sometimes with the barrel of a gun and Farsi calligraphy inscribed over the body parts. The poetry used includes verses by Fourough Farrokhzad, one of Iran's most radical modern poets. Neshat explains that she quite deliberately chose to juxtapose these few elements in the series. 'I was looking for a new language,' she says, 'So I chose to work within these boundaries. But I was very surprised that people paid attention.' Controversy followed, the images suggested multiple meanings: victimisation jostled with empowerment, elegance and femininity overlaid violence and politics. Those who could read the calligraphy uncovered more complex interpretations.
In Iran artists and film directors have to work under strict restrictions set by the censors. Neshat, who lives in New York and whose work exhibits around the world, has no such restrictions placed on her, but, interestingly, she imposed the boundaries on herself. She laughs and admits: 'Yes, there is a link between my work and Iranian cinema. I found working within these limits more creative – infinity is frightening…'
From photography Neshat moved into film and her video installation Turbulent won the Golden Lion First International Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1998. 'When I started making art, it was a psychological link to Iran for me,' explains Neshat. 'I started collaborating with other Iranians. So even when I was here in New York, I felt more part of a community.' Neshat's regular collaborators include the composer and performer Sussan Deyhim, cinematograhper Ghasem Ebrahimian and Academy Award-nominated actress Shohreh Aghdashloo. 'They interpret my concepts,' she says of the team she works with. 'They are all very talented and they shape my ideas.'
Neshat's considers film installations like Turbulent and Fervor to be very Iranian in the themes explored, while works like Rapture, Passage (a collaboration with Philip Glass) and Tooba are more universal. 'The key ideas are rooted in Iranian heritage,' she explains, 'but they all have the potential to come outside of those roots and be much more universal.'
Her latest project is a feature film of Shahrnush Parsipur's short novel 'Women Without Men', a magical realist work in which five women trying to escape their past come to live around a garden. Neshat's enthusiasm for the project is palpable: 'To be able to collaborate with Shahrnush on such terms, to give life to her stories…' she tails off, almost overwhelmed by the excitement.
Shirin Neshat has finally ceased to feel nostalgic for Iran. 'When I first went back to Iran, having had to immerse myself in the US lifestyle for so long in order to survive, I became obsessed by wanting to reintegrate. My art was a way to put myself in the middle of this.' But Neshat recognises that her work has developed away from this: 'I am no longer able to make a work that is purely Iranian, or purely American. I have had to adapt, to digest these different cultures and so have given birth to this third thing. It is a state of in-between.'
© Kamin Mohammadi 2004