What techniques does Shirin Neshat use?
Throughout the Women of Allah series, Shirin Neshat employs the use of direct calligraphic text on her photographs to create a pure, sensual visual presence and a material ornament that indicates meaning.
Where is Shirin Neshat now?
New York
About Shirin Neshat Neshat is an artist, actress, director, and filmmaker. Born near Tehran, Iran, in 1957, she now lives and works in New York. She initially used photography to explore gender and its relation to the religious and cultural value systems of Islam.
How did Shirin Neshat become successful?
She soon generated a career-making aesthetic: Since 1993, she’s created black-and-white films and photographs that examine political conflict and Muslim culture via a feminist lens. Her most famous photographic series, “Women of Allah” (1994), features images of the artist’s body overlaid with Arabic text.
Is Shirin Neshat a feminist?
Iranian contemporary visual artist and filmmaker, Shirin Neshat gives us a unique lens into contradictions within Islamic feminism. She uses her situation as a culturally-hybrid individual to mediate the dichotomy construed between Eastern and Western cultures and male and female relationships.
Why does Shirin Neshat use handwritten text?
The handwritten text represents the willingness of the artist to communicate with the viewer/reader on a very personal level; the act of writing is almost a confession of the artist as a way of revealing her identity by means of the inclusion of the autographic marks on the images of herself.
Why was Shirin Neilt exiled Iran?
The experience of being caught between two cultures is very much at the forefront of Shirin Neshat’s work. Neshat left Iran to study art in Los Angeles around the time of the Iranian Revolution, having been brought up to accept Western values by her father.
When did Shirin Neshat return to Iran?
1990
In 1990, Neshat returned to Iran, one year after Ayatollah Khomeini’s death. “It was probably one of the most shocking experiences that I have ever had.
Why did Shirin Neshat leave her country?
From Iran to California At the age of 17, Neshat left Iran and moved to California. She left the country just as many of her close friends were becoming activists and the Iranian Revolution of 1979 broke out.
Is Shirin Neshat in exile?
Neshat left Iran to study in the US in 1975, and has mostly lived there since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Her life in exile and nostalgia for a home she was officially banned from in 1996 informed her earliest bodies of work.
What is the poem in rebellious silence?
However, in Rebellious Silence, the script that runs across the artist’s face is from Tahereh Saffarzadeh’s poem “Allegiance with Wakefulness” which honors the conviction and bravery of martyrdom.
Who is Shirin Neshat?
Shirin Neshat uses photography, film, and video to delve into issues of femininity, religion, identity, exile, and cultural history. She’s particularly interested in the effects of Islamic fundamentalism and militancy, and in the relationship … Represented by industry leading galleries.
Why is Shirin Neshat’s women of Allah controversial?
Considered Shirin Neshat’s first mature body of works, Women of Allah has been considered controversial due to its ambiguity and avoidance of a distinct political stance. The pieces explore the idea of martyrdom and the ideology of Iranian women during the revolution.
What is allegiance with wakefulness by Shirin Neshat?
Allegiance with Wakefulness shows Neshat’s use of calligraphy as a tool to enhance the faces, eyes, hands and feet of women as an allusion to what remains visible of the female body in fundamentalist Islamic regions. Poetry is Shirin Neshat’s language. It functions as a veil that hides and reveals the significance of the pieces.
What is Shirin Neshat’s ‘Book of Kings’?
Shirin Neshat often says that for her, photography has always been about portraiture. The Book of Kings is a book of faces depicting 56 black-and-white compositions and one video installation inspired by the young activists involved in the Green Movement and the Arab Spring riots.