Shirin Neshat (Copy)
SHIRIN NESHAT
Born in Iran in 1957, Shirin Neshat grew up during the ferment of Islamic radicalism as it gained momentum in her country. In 1974, at the urging of her father, she emigrated to the United States, soon enrolling at the University of California, Berkeley to study art. By 1979, the Iranian Revolution would topple the existing monarchy. In its place, a new regime would enact drastic and unprecedented reforms based on Islamic fundamentalism. Neshat’s immigration status was stripped away, and she was exiled in the U.S.; twelve years would pass before she saw her family again. After graduating, Neshat relocated to New York City, overwhelmed by the upheaval in Iran, her art practice ceased for a solid decade. Still, Neshat would flourish as co-director of the nonprofit, Storefront for Art and Architecture, where she embarked on a formidable art education through the panels, symposiums, and exhibitions she organized.
In 1990, Shirin was finally able to visit her homeland, but the country she knew had suffered an alarming conversion. She was astounded by the fanaticism and loss of human rights, most strikingly, the restrictions imposed on women. Bearing witness to this grim reality was transformative, reigniting the artist inside her. And thus began a lauded, international career now spanning over three decades.
Neshat’s swift reengagement in the artistic process consisted of concept-driven works in photography, video, and film that delved into themes of tyranny, displacement, and resistance. Her work is poetic yet fiercely candid, at times provoking controversy, even hostility. One of her earliest bodies of work, Unveiling (1993), brought praise and dissent in reaction to images in which she explored veiled Muslim women, martyrdom, and the female experience. Black and white photographs were delicately embellished with Persian poetry handwritten in Arabic, the calligraphy sliding across exposed skin on Neshat’s own or her subjects’ faces, arms, and hands. Similarly, the series Women of Allah mined the symbolic nature of the veil, signifying female repression or a representation of psychic freedom for the religious. Here, female subjects were draped in hijabs while firearms poked out from beneath their black veils. Though Shirin Neshat’s depictions veered far from proselytizing, the reaction from the fundamentalists within Islamic culture was fierce: she would be banned from reentering Iran.
Working collaboratively, Neshat’s focus has expanded to performance, opera, and feature-length films. Her projects reflect a deep curiosity regarding the nature of the human spirit, its intricate narratives, and the roots of identity. The breath of Neshat’s practice is both elegiac and divine, illuminating issues of oppression, exploitation, and defiance in visionary works that hover between truth and poetry.
Shirin Neshat has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Art Institute of Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art, Berlin; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Museo Correr, Venice, Italy; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, Germany; Serpentine Gallery, London; SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Her retrospective, Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again was shown at The Broad in Los Angeles. In 2025, the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York, presented Shirin Neshat: Born of Fire, a non-linear survey.
Her numerous awards include the Golden Lion Award, First International Prize at the 48th Venice Biennial; Grand Prix of the Gwangju Biennial, Korea; Hiroshima Freedom Prize, Japan; Le Vie Dell’immagine Award, Nuova Accademia de Belle Arte, Italy; Lifetime Achievement
Award, International Center of Photography, New York; Artist of the Decade by Huffington Post; Crystal Award, World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland; Rockefeller Fellow, United States Artists, New York; the Praemium Imperiale Award, Tokyo; and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, New York. Neshat is represented by Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.
Shirin Neshat lives and works in New York City.
The Making of Land of Dreams was filmed on location in New Mexico in 2019.
Shirin Neshat’s interview was filmed in Brooklyn, NY, in May of 2023.
Recently screened at the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, Shirin Neshat: Voice of a Woman, centers on the internationally acclaimed and exiled Iranian American artist as she discusses the foremost theme of her work- women’s bodies as a locus for political and religious exploitation. Beginning in the 1990’s with her series The Women of Allah and carried through to her most recent exhibition The Fury, she continues to risk criticism and judgement as she furthers the issue of women’s rights today, distinguishing between art and propaganda which is increasingly misunderstood in our current globally divisive environment. Shirin Neshat: Voice of a Woman is a timely call to action to women around the world to unify and fight for equality as women’s rights are being violated and eliminated around the world.
In 2019, Sophie Chahinian and Matthew Hindra joined Shirin Neshat on location in New Mexico while she and her team created a new body of work, Land of Dreams, a two-channel video installation presented alongside a series of photographs. The installation features a narrative diptych following an Iranian woman, Simin, who travels through American towns photographing residents and collecting their dreams. The second channel shows Simin and others in a secretive Iranian colony analyzing these dreams. The Artist Profile Archive crew followed the filmmakers for several days resulting in The Making of Shirin Neshat’s Land of Dreams. This behind-the-scenes documentary gives a special glimpse into the artist’s filmmaking process. Previously only screened at museums in conjuction with the Land of Dreams exhibition, this film is now available.
The Making of Shirin Neshat’s Land of Dreams is available on demand here.
“Vito Acconci and Stephen Hall designed the Storefront for Art and Architecture. It was a meeting point for artists and architects. There was Mary Miss, Mel Chin, Alfredo Jaar, Kiki Smith. We had Zaha Hadid, and architects from Coop Himmelblau to Rem Koolhaas. So, you had the coolest artists to the coolest architects to the coolest architectural critics, scientists, philosophers, all coming together at the Storefront…it was just a gem.”
“My family had absolutely given up on their European, Westernized life - they were now focused on survival. Our reunion was so meaningful and so beautiful. But it was also horrifying – this authoritarian government. There was surveillance everywhere, you were constantly followed. It was very frightening.”
“ I came to New York in the ‘80s, and it wasn’t until 1990 that I was able to travel to Iran for the first time in 11 or 12 years. I brought my son, and it was just incredible - a transformative experience. The country had changed so profoundly from what I remember - it was now Islamicized. It was as if all the colors were lifted off the country. Now it was just all black and white.”
“Eventually I started to think, ‘Oh, maybe I can make art about this,’ and that’s how it started, the Women of Allah. So, when I came back to New York, I started to make photographs, and I would write on them. So, I would say I started to go to Iran first in 1990. My first work of art was 1993. It took three years of gestation.”
“With The Fury, I made the full circle back because I became obsessed with political prisoners in Iran and how those prisons are notorious for sexual assault and the rape of women and men…I wanted to make work that is about the female body as an object of violence, not just desire, and not as political rhetoric.”
