Accompanying an exhibit at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum, this catalogue frames Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat's work in relation to the recent history of Iran and the Islamic world. Neshat's work is both astutely politically engaged and insistently attuned to emotional and impressionistic human experiences. A series of photographic prints and video installations, for instance, features a fictional character named Munis, a young woman who strives for social justice, confronts oppression from an older brother, commits suicide, and enters an otherworldly space of the political undead. Several other works feature Persian text, pulled from literary sources and inserted onto the hands, feet, and faces of Neshat's melancholic photographic subjects. The catalogue includes a number of essays celebrating Neshat in the context of modern Iranian history, and in particular the realities of U.S. influence and intervention in the country. In concert with the evocative, striking images and Neshat's own contextualization of her work, the catalogue provides not only an illuminating take on an important video and photographic artist, but also a nuanced understanding of Iran's recent political and cultural evolution.
Born in Iran in 1957, Shirin Neshat came to the U.S. in 1975, and here she has remained as oppression and war continue to roil her homeland. As an artist in exile, Neshat has steeped herself in Iran’s history, literature, and political and social movements, especially the activism of women, and created elegant, melancholy, and dramatic photographs, videos, and films exploring the underlying complexities of Iranian lives. In Women of Allah (1997), Neshat portrays women in chador, lacing with exquisite Persian calligraphy (poems and prose by Iranian women writers) the parts of the body that remain uncovered. Neshat’s galvanizing black-and-white stills from her videos Turbulence, Rapture, and Fervor depict the separation of the sexes and the loneliness of displacement. In this superlative volume, Neshat’s graceful, dignified work is illuminated by cogent analysis and her own resonant commentary.
Melissa Ho is a curator at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, where she organized the exhibitions Salvatore Scarpitta: Traveler, Barbara Kruger: Belief+Doubt, and, with Evelyn Hankins, At The Hub of Things: New Views of the Collection. She has contributed to numerous publications, including Color Chart: Reinventing Color 1950 to Today and Barnett Newman. Mahnaz Afkhami is currently the executive director of the Foundation for Iranian Studies, and was formerly Minister of Women's Affairs for Iran.
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