Photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat was born in Qazvin, Iran in 1957. As a teenager she came to the United States to study art in California, but her destiny changed forever when the Islamic Revolution made it impossible for her to return home for over a decade. Thus began her life as an accidental exile in a place much different from her homeland. Her work depicting Islamic women in poetic and arresting images keeps her traveling and crossing many geographic and cultural borders for much of the year, away from New York where she's based. For this woman of the world, the nomadic lifestyle suits her just fine. In between places she feels quite at home.
"Art was first an excuse to delve into sociopolitical issues of my country, but at the time, strangely, I was dealing with very personal questions that had to do with my relationship to the country and my own anxiety. Everything I've done, it's always about this conjunction between the personal and the social. When I'm looking for some kind of question or answer in the country and culture where I come from, the Islamic culture, I'm also looking for something very specific about and for myself. A lot of the characters from my work, or some of the stories I come up with are subconsciously and intuitively about issues that I'm struggling with as a human being.
When you look at my work, you realize that this is from the point of view of an artist who doesn't live there. My identity and the identity of my own work can be described as a hybrid -- bicultural and exilic. For a long time I saw that not as a positive thing, but now I see it as a positive because [the work] never tries to pretend to be otherwise. It never tries to tell the truth in the sense that it's not documentary work. It's not about putting facts straight. It's more about an observation, a distant observation that's more poetic.
I think exile is kind of a strong word, although I clearly don't go back to my country. There's a barrier between my country and me -- I'm physically not able to go. When you're volunteering to not go somewhere and when you actually don't have a choice, it's a big difference. So in that sense, I am exiled from my country. Over the years, I've grown to not only get used to this nomadic life but I've also grown to like it. If I were to be reunited completely [with Iran], I wonder, would I last in my own place of birth?
Those of us who have distance from our cultures, automatically we choose themes that seem to be more universal, less specific to that moment or the function of the country, although it's still very ethnically specific. This is a very big question we all face, those of us who are non-Western and functioning in the West: How do we communicate to the world? How do we make sure that our original idea is not compromised because of the differences in culture? And how can we appeal to the public in a way we would like them to understand?
Since September 11, the whole world has focused on Islamic culture, and that has been a mixed blessing for me. Yes, it puts you on the map more than usual. But at the same time, it gives you an immense responsibility -- to be very clear, to know your position, to know who you're talking to. I come from a country where I can't tolerate the government and the government can't tolerate me. One has to be very careful as an artist, a speaker of one's culture. So it has been interesting to be in my place but not always very easy."
SHIRIN NESHAT'S ART INFLUENCES
ARDESHIR
MOHASSES: A fantastic artist or more like a political satirist. He's
Iranian but lives in New York. He's hugely inspirational for me. I have
no humor in my work, but he uses humor and poetry and politics --
absolutely profound and beautiful.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC: She's
from Yugoslavia but you can't say that her work is Serbian. She's
constantly everywhere.
Finnish artist EIJA-LIISA AHTILA: One
of the best video artists in the world.
Dutch photographer RINEKE
DIJKSTRA: We met and bonded mainly because we like each other's work
so much.
Neshat is finishing up her first feature film, Women Without Men, which will be released early 2009.
[From top to bottom] Shirin Neshat: "Stories of Martyrdom," 1994, photo by Cynthia Preston, Copyright by Shirin Neshat, Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York. Eija-Liisa Ahtila: "Where is Where? Missä on Missä?," 2008, Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris. Marina Abramovic: Still from Eight Lessons on Happiness with a Happy End, 2008, copyright wby Marina Abramovic, Courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. Rineke Dijkstra: "Odessa, Ukraine August 4," 1993, Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris. Ardeshir Mohassess: "The Men Bent in Prayer to God and the Government Airplane Arrived," 1977, Courtesy of the Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
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