Shirin Neshat
Encyclopedia
Shirin Neshat شیرین نشاط (born March 26, 1957 in Qazvin
, Iran
) is an Iran
ian visual artist
who lives in New York
. She is known primarily for her work in film, video and photography.
Neshat has stated about her father, “He fantasized about the west, romanticized the west, and slowly rejected all of his own values; both my parents did. What happened, I think, was that their identity slowly dissolved, they exchanged it for comfort. It served their class” (Mackenzie 3). As a part of Neshat’s “Westernization” she was enrolled in a Catholic boarding school in Tehran. She found the environment cold and hostile in comparison to her caring family.
Through her father’s acceptance of Western ideologies came an acceptance of a form of western feminism. Neshat’s father encouraged his daughters to “be an individual, to take risks, to learn, to see the world” (MacDonald 3), and he sent his daughters as well as his sons to college to receive their higher education.
occurred. As an effect of the political restructuring, after the revolution her father, who had been financially secure and about to retire, was left without benefits and a meager salary (MacDonald 4). Once the revolution was over and the society was restructured as a traditional Islamic nation, her family was no longer able to enjoy the comfortable life to which they had grown accustomed. About a year after the revolution, Neshat moved to the San Francisco Bay area and began studying at Dominican College
. Eventually, she enrolled in UC Berkeley and completed her BA
, MA
and MFA
.
After graduate school, she moved to New York and married a Korean curator, Kyong Park, who was the director and founder of Storefront for Art and Architecture
, a non-profit organization. Neshat helped Park run the Storefront, where she was exposed to many different ideologies and it would become a place where she received a much needed experience with and exposure to concepts that would later become integral to her artwork.
During this time, she did not make any serious attempts at creating art, and the few attempts were subsequently destroyed. In 1990, she returned to Iran. "It was probably one of the most shocking experiences that I have ever had. The difference between what I had remembered from the Iranian culture and what I was witnessing was enormous. The change was both frightening and exciting; I had never been in a country that was so ideologically based. Most noticeable, of course, was the change in people's physical appearance and public behavior." As a way of coping with the discrepancy between the culture that she was experiencing and that of the pre-revolution Iran in which she was raised, she began her first mature body of work, the Women of Allah series.
Her work refers to the social, cultural and religious codes of Muslim
societies and the complexity of certain oppositions, such as man and woman. Neshat often emphasizes this theme showing two or more coordinated films concurrently, creating stark visual contrasts through motifs such as light and dark, black and white, male and female. Neshat has also made more traditional narrative short films, such as her recent work, Zarin.
The work of Shirin Neshat addresses the social, political and psychological dimensions of women's experience in contemporary Islamic societies. Although Neshat actively resists stereotypical representations of Islam, her artistic objectives are not explicitly polemical. Rather, her work recognizes the complex intellectual and religious forces shaping the identity of Muslim women throughout the world. Using Persian poetry and calligraphy she examined concepts such as martyrdom, the space of exile, the issues of identity and femininity.
As a photographer and video-artist, Shirin Neshat was recognized for her portraits of women entirely overlaid by Persian calligraphy (notably through the Women of Allah series). She also directed several videos, among them Anchorage (1996) and, projected on two opposing walls: Shadow under the Web (1997), Turbulent (1998), Rapture (1999) and Soliloquy (1999).
Neshat's recognition became more international in 1999, when she won the International Award of the XLVIII Venice Biennale
with Turbulent and Rapture, a project involving almost 250 extras and produced by the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont which met with critical and public success after its worldwide avant-première at the Art Institute of Chicago
in May 1999. With Rapture, Neshat tried for the first time to make pure photography with the intent of creating an aesthetic, poetic, and emotional shock.
In 2001-02, Neshat collaborated with singer Sussan Deyhim
and created Logic of the Birds, which was produced by curator and art historian RoseLee Goldberg
. The full length multimedia production premiered at the Lincoln Center Summer Festival in 2002 and toured to the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis and to Artangel
in London.
Shirin Neshat has become one of the most well known Persian artist within the Western artistic world. While she lives in New York City, she addresses a global audience. Her earlier work was symbolic of her personal grief, anxiety and the pain of separation from her home country. It took a neutral position on Islam. As time progressed and the Islamic regime of Iran became more intrusive and oppressive, Neshat's artwork became more boldly political and subversively critical against it.
She seeks to, according an article in Time, "untangle the ideology of Islam through her art." Her current cinematic work continues to express the poetic, philosophical, and metaphorical as well as complex levels of intellectual abstraction.
In 2006 Shirin was awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
, one of the richest prizes in the arts, given annually to “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”
Shirin was profiled in The New Yorker
magazine on October 22, 2007.
In 2009 Neshat won the Silver Lion
for best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival
for her directional debut Women without Men
, based on Shahrnush Parsipur
's novel of the same name.
She said about the movie: "This has been a labour of love for six years.(...) This film speaks to the world and to my country."
The film examines the 1953 British- and American-backed coup, which supplanted Iran's democratically elected government with a monarchy.
Games of Desire, a video and still-photography piece, was displayed between September 3 and October 3 at the Gladstone Gallery in Brussels before moving in November to the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont in Paris. The film, which is based in Laos, centers on a small group of elderly people who sing folk songs with sexual lyrics - a practice which had been nearing obsolescence.
In July 2009 Shirin Neshat took part in a three-day hunger strike at the United Nations headquarters in New York in protest of the 2009 Iranian presidential election
.
In December 2010 Shirin Neshat was named Artist of the Decade by Huffington Post critic G. Roger Denson
, for "the degree to which world events have more than met the artist in making her art chronically relevant to an increasingly global culture," for reflecting "the ideological war being waged between Islam and the secular world over matters of gender, religion, and democracy," and because "the impact of her work far transcends the realms of art in reflecting the most vital and far-reaching struggle to assert human rights."
Qazvin
Qazvin is the largest city and capital of the Province of Qazvin in Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 349,821, in 96,420 families....
, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
) is an Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian visual artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
who lives in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. She is known primarily for her work in film, video and photography.
Background
Neshat's parents were upper middle-class. Her father was a well-respected physician and her mother a homemaker.Neshat has stated about her father, “He fantasized about the west, romanticized the west, and slowly rejected all of his own values; both my parents did. What happened, I think, was that their identity slowly dissolved, they exchanged it for comfort. It served their class” (Mackenzie 3). As a part of Neshat’s “Westernization” she was enrolled in a Catholic boarding school in Tehran. She found the environment cold and hostile in comparison to her caring family.
Through her father’s acceptance of Western ideologies came an acceptance of a form of western feminism. Neshat’s father encouraged his daughters to “be an individual, to take risks, to learn, to see the world” (MacDonald 3), and he sent his daughters as well as his sons to college to receive their higher education.
Life and work in the West
Neshat left Iran to study art in Los Angeles at about the time that the Iranian RevolutionIranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...
occurred. As an effect of the political restructuring, after the revolution her father, who had been financially secure and about to retire, was left without benefits and a meager salary (MacDonald 4). Once the revolution was over and the society was restructured as a traditional Islamic nation, her family was no longer able to enjoy the comfortable life to which they had grown accustomed. About a year after the revolution, Neshat moved to the San Francisco Bay area and began studying at Dominican College
Dominican University of California
Dominican University of California is a four year, accredited, private, Catholic-heritage, and co-educational institution located in San Rafael, California. Founded in 1890 as Dominican College, Dominican is one of the oldest universities in California. The U.S. News and World Report ranks...
. Eventually, she enrolled in UC Berkeley and completed her BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
, MA
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
and MFA
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
.
After graduate school, she moved to New York and married a Korean curator, Kyong Park, who was the director and founder of Storefront for Art and Architecture
Storefront for Art and Architecture
' is a contemporary art and architecture institution founded in 1982 in New York City.-Background:Founded in 1982 by Kyong Park, Storefront for Art and Architecture is a nonprofit organization in New York City committed to the advancement of innovative positions in architecture, art and design...
, a non-profit organization. Neshat helped Park run the Storefront, where she was exposed to many different ideologies and it would become a place where she received a much needed experience with and exposure to concepts that would later become integral to her artwork.
During this time, she did not make any serious attempts at creating art, and the few attempts were subsequently destroyed. In 1990, she returned to Iran. "It was probably one of the most shocking experiences that I have ever had. The difference between what I had remembered from the Iranian culture and what I was witnessing was enormous. The change was both frightening and exciting; I had never been in a country that was so ideologically based. Most noticeable, of course, was the change in people's physical appearance and public behavior." As a way of coping with the discrepancy between the culture that she was experiencing and that of the pre-revolution Iran in which she was raised, she began her first mature body of work, the Women of Allah series.
Her work refers to the social, cultural and religious codes of Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
societies and the complexity of certain oppositions, such as man and woman. Neshat often emphasizes this theme showing two or more coordinated films concurrently, creating stark visual contrasts through motifs such as light and dark, black and white, male and female. Neshat has also made more traditional narrative short films, such as her recent work, Zarin.
The work of Shirin Neshat addresses the social, political and psychological dimensions of women's experience in contemporary Islamic societies. Although Neshat actively resists stereotypical representations of Islam, her artistic objectives are not explicitly polemical. Rather, her work recognizes the complex intellectual and religious forces shaping the identity of Muslim women throughout the world. Using Persian poetry and calligraphy she examined concepts such as martyrdom, the space of exile, the issues of identity and femininity.
As a photographer and video-artist, Shirin Neshat was recognized for her portraits of women entirely overlaid by Persian calligraphy (notably through the Women of Allah series). She also directed several videos, among them Anchorage (1996) and, projected on two opposing walls: Shadow under the Web (1997), Turbulent (1998), Rapture (1999) and Soliloquy (1999).
Neshat's recognition became more international in 1999, when she won the International Award of the XLVIII Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
with Turbulent and Rapture, a project involving almost 250 extras and produced by the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont which met with critical and public success after its worldwide avant-première at the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
in May 1999. With Rapture, Neshat tried for the first time to make pure photography with the intent of creating an aesthetic, poetic, and emotional shock.
In 2001-02, Neshat collaborated with singer Sussan Deyhim
Sussan Deyhim
Sussan Deyhim is an Iranian singer, composer and dancer.Born in Tehran, her career began as a dancer with Iran's Pars National Ballet company...
and created Logic of the Birds, which was produced by curator and art historian RoseLee Goldberg
Roselee Goldberg
RoseLee Goldberg is an American-based art historian, author, critic and curator. She wrote a study of performance art, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present...
. The full length multimedia production premiered at the Lincoln Center Summer Festival in 2002 and toured to the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis and to Artangel
Artangel
Artangel is a London-based arts organisation founded in 1985 by Roger Took. Directed since 1991 by James Lingwood and Michael Morris, it has commissioned and produced a string of notable site-specific works, plus several projects for TV, film, radio and the web...
in London.
Shirin Neshat has become one of the most well known Persian artist within the Western artistic world. While she lives in New York City, she addresses a global audience. Her earlier work was symbolic of her personal grief, anxiety and the pain of separation from her home country. It took a neutral position on Islam. As time progressed and the Islamic regime of Iran became more intrusive and oppressive, Neshat's artwork became more boldly political and subversively critical against it.
She seeks to, according an article in Time, "untangle the ideology of Islam through her art." Her current cinematic work continues to express the poetic, philosophical, and metaphorical as well as complex levels of intellectual abstraction.
In 2006 Shirin was awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize or Gish Prize is given annually to “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.” It is one of the richest prizes in the American arts, for example the 2010 winner received...
, one of the richest prizes in the arts, given annually to “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”
Shirin was profiled in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
magazine on October 22, 2007.
In 2009 Neshat won the Silver Lion
Silver Lion
The Leone d’Argento refers to a number of awards presented at the Venice Film Festival. The Silver Lion is awarded irregularly and have gone through several changes of purpose. Until 1995, Silver Lions were infrequently awarded to a number of films as second prize for those nominated for the...
for best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
for her directional debut Women without Men
Women Without Men
Women Without Men is a 1956 British drama film directed by Elmo Williamsand Herbert Glazer and starring Beverly Michaels, Joan Rice and Hermione Baddeley. Three woman break out of prison together, for varying personal reasons...
, based on Shahrnush Parsipur
Shahrnush Parsipur
Shahrnush Parsipur is an Iranian novelist. She is the daughter of an attorney in the Iranian Justice Ministry originally from Shiraz.-Biography:...
's novel of the same name.
She said about the movie: "This has been a labour of love for six years.(...) This film speaks to the world and to my country."
The film examines the 1953 British- and American-backed coup, which supplanted Iran's democratically elected government with a monarchy.
Games of Desire, a video and still-photography piece, was displayed between September 3 and October 3 at the Gladstone Gallery in Brussels before moving in November to the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont in Paris. The film, which is based in Laos, centers on a small group of elderly people who sing folk songs with sexual lyrics - a practice which had been nearing obsolescence.
In July 2009 Shirin Neshat took part in a three-day hunger strike at the United Nations headquarters in New York in protest of the 2009 Iranian presidential election
Iranian presidential election, 2009
Iran's tenth presidential election was held on 12 June 2009, with incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad running against three challengers. The next morning the Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official news agency, announced that with two-thirds of the votes counted, Ahmadinejad had won the election...
.
In December 2010 Shirin Neshat was named Artist of the Decade by Huffington Post critic G. Roger Denson
G. Roger Denson
G. Roger Denson is an American art critic, theoretician, novelist, and curator. A regular contributor to Huffington Post, his writings have also appeared in such international publications as Art in America, Parkett, Artscribe International, Flash Art, Bijutsu Techo, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien,...
, for "the degree to which world events have more than met the artist in making her art chronically relevant to an increasingly global culture," for reflecting "the ideological war being waged between Islam and the secular world over matters of gender, religion, and democracy," and because "the impact of her work far transcends the realms of art in reflecting the most vital and far-reaching struggle to assert human rights."
Works
- Turbulent, 1998. Two channel video/audio installation.
- Rapture, 1999. Two channel video/audio installation.
- Soliloquy, 1999. Color video/audio installation with artist as the protagonist.
- Fervor, 2000. Two channel video/audio installation.
- Passage, 2001. Single channel video/audio installation.
- Logic of the Birds, 2002. Multi-media Performance.
- Mahdokht, 2004. Three channel video/audio installation.
- Zarin, 2005. Single channel video/audio installation.
- Munis, 2008. Color video/audio installation based on Shahrnush Parsipur’sShahrnush ParsipurShahrnush Parsipur is an Iranian novelist. She is the daughter of an attorney in the Iranian Justice Ministry originally from Shiraz.-Biography:...
novel Women Without Men. - Faezeh, 2008. Color video/audio installation based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men.
- Possession, 2009. Black & white video/audio installation.
- Women Without Men, 2009. Feature film based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men.
Film and Video
- Expressing the inexpressible [videorecording DVD] : Shirin Neshat. c 2004, 42 minutes, Color. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences. Originally produced by Westdeutscher Rundfunk in 2000.
External links
- CV/Images
- Heyoka magazine Interview with John LeKay
- Arthur Danto Shirin Neshat interview
- Time profile, photo essay and interview (08/2000)
- Guardian article (07/2000)
- Guardian article (10/2002)
- Reuters article (10/2006)
- On Iran's Green Revolution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXzt9Jcxnis
- G. Roger Denson, "Shirin Neshat: Artist of the Decade," (12/2010)