It is a pain, even for us who live almost 5 kilometers away, to talk about the'Iran of today, a country that still bears the traces of one of the greatest and most fascinating civilizations on our planet.
Let alone what thinking it, imagining it and representing it can represent for aIranian artist in voluntary exile since 1974, 10 kilometers from its land and its roots.
Undoubtedly the figure that characterizes the work of the photographer and multimedia artist Shirin Neshat, exiled in New York, is precisely the pain, the affliction, the sadness. But also the categorical imperative of redemption.
Pain, but not resignation
Perhaps the most sincere and shocking manifesto of pain of the Neshat for the state of affairs in his own country – visited only once after his transfer to America – are the inscriptions in the Farsi language impressed on the remaining uncovered parts of the bodies of Iranian women cloaked and veiled. We are in the photographic series The women of Allah made in the mid-nineties.
The verses of Iranian poets placed on the skin of women according to the technique of Islamic calligraphy (which has left splendid artistic testimonies) also have the value of a cri de guerre against the regime that subjugates them.
You can certainly see the pain in these shots, but not the resignation. You see the will to resist that emerges indomitable from the proud and regal faces of the women who have decided to pose in front of the Neshat lens.
A feeling of the latter that appears even more explicit in the weapons they take up women in Rapture, a 1999 installation awarded the Golden Lion at the 48th Venice Art Biennale.
A multimedia artist
Neshat's art is not expressed only through photography. She is also one videomaker and a director first-rate feature films.
His first feature film women without men, adapted from the novel of the same name by Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur, it was awarded Il Silver Lion for Best Director at the 1999 Venice Film Festival.
Today, the title of a book by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson, which has also become two films (on Prime Video and Apple TV), would be more appropriate to describe the events in his country, with a superb female character (Lisbeth Salander ).
The following Susanne John she will tell you more about the life and work of this extraordinary artist who is looked up to by many women who are challenging the regime in the squares of Iranian cities which denies them the most elementary freedoms.
The text is excerpt from the beautiful book Focus. Stories and battles of 40 women photographers.
Women in Chadors: Female Identity in the Muslim World by Susanne John
Shirin Neshat is today the most famous Iranian photographer and video artist, naturalized American. She was born in 1957 in Iran, at the time of the monarchy of Shah Reza Pahlavi and thanks to a prosperous family economic situation and a progressive father who adhered to the political vision of the monarch, Shirin and her sisters were free to choose their own studies.
In the early sixties there was the so-called "white revolution", with a detailed program of economic and social modernization of Iran, resolutely oriented towards Western models and carried forward by proclaiming freedom of religion.
It was precisely this political agenda that guaranteed Shirin an autonomous childhood and adolescence until the mid-XNUMXs, when the climate began to change drastically.
The move to the United States
Sensing that the situation was escalating, Shirin decided to move to the United States to continue his studies away from any dangers. More than ten years had to pass before the photographer decided to go in Iran for a short visit: event that would prove to be deeply traumatic and decisive for his choice of permanent voluntary exile in the United States.
She was shocked when she was confronted with the radical changes caused by the Islamic revolution, which had had a brutal impact above all on the lives of the women whom Shirin now saw walking down the street wrapped in chadors that left only their faces and hands uncovered in a society at the antipodes of the one in which she had grown up.
To decipher life within the Islamic Republic, with its rigid theocratic diktats and a dualistic government partly democratic and partly dictatorial, he decided he wanted to witness various contradictory situations. To carry out the project he initially chose the photographic medium and as the subject the body of Iranian women through which to broaden one's gaze on the radically changed society: he dedicated himself to documenting the limitation of their freedom, their struggle to improve their social status, but also their adherence to contemporary Islamism and their interaction with a macho world determined to control their will in a capillary way.
Allah's women
Between 1993 and 1997 the first famous was born photographic series Women of Allah (Women of Allah). A project that stands out for its strong visual impact and widespread poetic aspect. The female protagonists of her extensive project all wear the veil: Shirin focuses mostly on faces, hands and feet.
The skin of the exposed parts is covered with a river of words written in Persian calligraphy, Farsi, the language the artist grew up with: most of the texts reproduced are poems and works by Iranian women written before or after the revolution.
Words reveal the strength and will of women Iranians not to be considered victims and not to surrender to their fate. The portraits promote the idea of courageous female figures who do not accept invisibility, who also know how to rebel against Islamic laws, but who at the same time do not intend to renounce their religious, cultural and intellectual belonging.
The women of Neshat are not those resigned and submissive according to the most common Western vision which considers the veil only a humiliating obligation: they they are not afraid of men and they respond with a look of fierce intensity. And there is no shortage of words of support for the comrade engaged in the Islamist struggle.
The warriors
In 1995 the artist presented his project Seeking Martyrdom (Seeking martyrdom). Shocking images, where, among other women, she also presents herself with a rifle in her blood-colored hands: Neshat, the warrior, has chosen art as a weapon to fight against censorship and oppression, creating provocative portraits that are not easy to interpret. In 1999 Shirin Neshat changed medium and made some video installations including Rapture, where he addresses the issue of gender discrimination in Iran. It juxtaposes two screens where, physically separated, groups of men dressed informally move on one side and groups of women wrapped in fluttering black chadors on the other. Powerful images that convey restlessness and uncertainty.
In the same year the artist won the Golden Lion at the 48th Venice Biennale for the best artistic project. Other video installations from the same year compare the relationship with religion in the Islamic and Christian worlds.
They are articulated and complex messages: while in the Islamic world the individual risks disappearing due to strict impositions, in the Western world the individual risks moving further and further away from the spiritual dimension.
Women without men
In 2009 he even made his debut as director with the film Women Without Men (Women without Men), awarded in Venice with the Silver Lion for best direction.
The film tells with delicacy and deep empathy the stories of four Islamic women whose life will lead them to meet in a difficult world full of pain.
In his most recent photographic project entitled Land of Dreams, made once again in black and white, the artist offers a story that develops in more than one hundred shots to talk about the'cracking of the myth of America what a promised land, where everyone finds an opportunity to start over.
In his photographic project flanked by two video installations and a film, Neshat chooses Trump's America to denounce anti-democratic and racist policies.
Shirin has been able to develop an exquisitely personal artistic language during her career. Starting from photography, he has also made him the expressive power of video and the cinematographic medium to talk about feminism and politics, democracy and religion, human rights and social commitment.
The artist, who lives and works in New York, has obtained many international awards over the years and continues to exhibit his work all over the world, but not in Iran, his native country.
