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A NATIVE OF QAZVIN, IRAN, Shirin Neshat finished high school and attended college in the United States and once the Islamic Revolution had transformed Iran, decided to remain in this country. She now lives in New York City, where she is represented by the Barbara Gladstone Gallery. In the mid-1990s, Neshat became known for a series of large photographs, "Women of Allah," which she designed, directed (not a trained photographer, she hired Larry Barns, Kyong Park, and others to make her images), posed for, and decorated with poetry written in Farsi.
The "Women of Allah" photographs provide a sustained rumination on the status and psyche of women in traditional Islamic cultures, using three primary elements: the black veil, modern weapons, and the written texts. In each photograph Neshat appears, dressed in black, sometimes covered completely, facing the camera, holding a weapon, usually a gun. The texts often appear to be part of the photographed imagery. The photographs are both intimate and confrontational. They reflect the repressed status of women in Iran and their power, as women and as Muslims. They depict Neshat herself as a woman caught between the freedom of expression evident in the photographs and the complex demands of her Islamic heritage, in which Iranian women are expected to support and sustain a revolution that frees them from Western decadence and represses dimensions of their individuality and creativity.
By 1998, Neshat was making films, shot in 16mm (and later in 35mm), and initially presented as gallery installations, usually organized so that the viewer stands between two projections that face each other-and sometimes seem to address each other-from opposite walls. In Turbulent (1998), for example, a man (Shoja Azari) and a woman (Sussan Deyhim) are seen on opposite sides of the gallery space. First, the man sings a song, to the delight of an all-male audience. When his song has ended, the woman performs a complex vocal piece. She has no audience and sings no lyrics, but her voice and delivery are evocative and powerful, so powerful that the man on the opposite side of the gallery seems as mesmerized by her as we are. In the installation of Rapture (1999), one screen reveals a large group of men who march aggressively toward the...