Shirin Neshat was born and raised in Iran, but currently lives in the United States. Like many international artists today, she crosses boundaries of genre, race, nationality, ethnicity, and culture in both her life and her work. She draws from her divergent experiences in order to address culturally specific issues about loss, meaning, and memory that resonate universally on both emotional and intuitive levels. She often brings both social and political agendas to the fore by addressing the conflict between feminism and contemporary Islamic practice. More than statements of the artist's own beliefs, however, her works question the myths and realities of the female experience in Islamic society and address the complexities surrounding such issues as patriarchy, colonialism, and displacement.

In the past two years, Neshat's work has focused on film. Beginning with Turbulent (1998), which was included in the Walker exhibition Unfinished History (1998), the artist has collaborated on her projects with a team of professionals trained in film production. Her works are projected side-by-side or on opposing walls of enclosed gallery spaces. The physical experience of viewing these videos parallels their evocative content: the viewer stands between two projections, situated in the midst of a visual and narrative dialogue.

Soliloquy (1999) explores self-identity and the splitting of the self. The dual projection shows a veiled Neshat roaming through an anonymous modern cityscape (filmed in Albany, New York) on one screen. On the other, a similarly dressed Neshat explores a traditional Eastern cityscape (filmed in Mardin, Turkey). As the film progresses, the opposing images of the artist highlight the differences between the Western and Eastern worlds, exile and home, modern and traditional. As the film ends, she suggests a reconciliation of these dualities by mixing choral music and chanted prayer in a hybrid synthesis of the divergent worlds.

Neshat recently won the prestigious Golden Lion prize for her film work at the 1998 Venice Biennale. This acquisition continues the Walker's ongoing commitment to global contemporary art, broadening the reach of its collection to include work by artists from all parts of the world.

View Text Item

"When I began to focus on the traditional and philosophical ideas behind Islam, particularly in relation to women, I decided to remain within the framework of the social, cultural, and religious codes. . . . I believe to have done otherwise would have been disrespectful and simply reactionary. Once I had established this pattern, I was faced with an incredibly reduced number of elements of representation. This reduction offered me a sense of clarity, of simplicity, that seemed to imply the possibility of penetrating more deeply into the subject."

"I see my work as a visual discourse on the subjects of feminism and contemporary Islam--a discourse that puts certain myths and realities to the test, claiming that they are far more complex than most of us have imagined. It is very important to point out, however, that I don't see myself as an expert on this subject. Rather, I consider myself a passionate inquirer. I prefer raising questions as opposed to answering them, as I am totally unable to do otherwise. And I am not interested in creating works that simply state my personal political point of view."

Excerpts from an interview with Shirin Neshat by Gerald Matt published in an exhibition catalog, Shirin Neshat, Kunsthalle Wein, Wein, Germany and Serpentine Gallery, London, England, 2000.

"Soliloquy was not a biographical piece. It is based on my personal experience--this experience of course not being unique, as the globalization of the world and the rapid migration has uprooted many of us. . . . My family of course never completely understood the feeling of "dislocation" that I have experienced, since they were not with me. But after so many years of distance they have accepted that I will never completely come back. These are the types of subtle issues that I was hoping to bring up in Soliloquy: issues that are entirely based on emotions as opposed to facts."

Excerpt from an interview with Shirin Neshat on the online forum of the Carnegie International: 1999-2000.

View Text Item

Shirin Neshat was born and raised in Iran, but was sent to the United States at the age of 17 to study art. When she was 22 years old, in 1979, the Islamic Revolution overtook Iran. She did not return for 11 years. During that time Iran went through major cultural and social changes, and by the time Neshat went there in 1990 she barely recognized her country. This experience affected her deeply, as she has said, "I can never call any place home. I will forever be in a state of in-between." Shirin Neshat stands between cultures metaphorically, psychologically, and socially, and she explores this feeling in her films and photographs.

Soliloquy, the most autobiographical of Shirin Neshat's works, examines self-identity. By placing the viewer between two screens that face each other, the artist shows how a person can feel divided between two worlds. One screen depicts a veiled Neshat roaming through an anonymous modern cityscape (filmed in Albany, New York). On the other, she is similarly dressed but traverses a traditional Eastern cityscape (Mardin, Turkey). She made this work shortly after the deaths of her father and cousin in Iran. It is marked by a sense of loss: mourning for family, for the pre-Revolutionary Iran of her childhood, and for her own sense of place, which she lost when her father sent her to study in the United States.

View Text Item

In Soliloquy, Shirin Neshat wears clothing resembling a chador, the traditional Iranian dress for Muslim women. A chador is a large cloth worn as a combination head covering, veil, and shawl. The garment was forbidden in Iran when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was in charge, before 1979. Known as the shah, he wanted to modernize Iran and was supported by the United States. After the Iranian Revolution removed him from power, women were seen as key to achieving public change and they were required by the government to wear the garment. Since that time the chador has become more a political issue and less a religious one. (In fact, the law of Islam as written in the Koran does not require women to wear veils.)

In Iran, wearing a chador allows women to move outside the confinement of home into public and professional areas. As one Iranian schoolgirl explains: "We want to stop men from treating us like sex objects. . . . We want them to ignore our appearance and be attentive to our personalities and minds. We want them to take us seriously and treat us as equals, not just chase us around for our bodies and physical looks."

Excerpt from Women in World History Curriculum 2002

Shirin Neshat has firsthand knowledge of the chador and its complex history, having grown up in an Iran that forbade the chador and now representing her homeland in her work. But the complicated symbols suggested by the chador are a small part of what Neshat is after. For her, it points to larger issues of women's roles and cultural identity in a global world.

View Text Item

"The reality of contemporary feminism in Iran is that resistance is an essential part of a woman's experience. As a result, women are very tough, the exact opposite of the outside image we have of these women. My attempt has always been to reveal, in a very candid way, the layers of unpredictability and strength that are not so evident on the surface."
--Shirin Neshat, 2000

"I had been working on the subject of the female body in relation to politics in Islam and the way in which a woman's body has been a type of battleground for various kinds of rhetoric and political ideology. Recently, through some reading, I became very interested in how space and special boundaries are also politicized and are designed to lift personal and individual desire from the public domain and contain it within private spaces. Ultimately, men dominate public spaces and women exist for the most part in private spaces . . . "
--Shirin Neshat, 1997

Many of Neshat's works relate to women's rights in conflict with contemporary Islamic practice, which dictates strict rules for women's behavior and mode of dress. But the artist cautions that feminist ideas from the United States may not apply to feminists in Iran. Equality between women and men is a goal often associated with U.S. feminism. Neshat, however, believes that Iranian feminists don't desire equality with men. They accept and respect differences between men and women, and seek rights that serve women as equal partners with men, but with different roles in society.

View Text Item

"Whatever the reason, however, those of us living in the state of the "in between" have certain advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of being exposed to a new culture and in my case the freedom that comes with living in the U.S.A. The disadvantages of course being that you will never experience again being in a 'center' or quite at 'home' anywhere."
--Shirin Neshat, 2000

"Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions."
--Edward Said, excerpt from Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, 2000

Shirin Neshat's Soliloquy (1999) explores self-identity and is shown with the viewer placed in between two screens that face each other. One screen reveals a veiled Neshat wandering through a Western cityscape, while the other shows her in similar clothing making her way through a traditional Eastern cityscape. The architecture highlights the differences between the two worlds. Through acceptance and rejection, the artist examines ideas of exile and home, of modern and traditional, and of the individual and the communal.

One advantage of Neshat's "in between" state is her ability to critique the cultures of Iran and the United States from the perspectives of "outside looking in" and "inside looking out." The results are two points of view that run parallel to each other: on the one hand Western, exile, and modern, and on the other Eastern, traditional, and home. Her unique vantage point allows us to place ourselves at a position of our own choosing, viewing Neshat's work not from a place that she has defined, but from one we define for ourselves.

View Text Item