Shirin neshat artist biography
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It received critical and public acclaim after its world premiere at the Art Institute of Chicago in May 1999. These photographs became iconic portraits of willfully armed Muslim women. She claims, "for ten years I practically didn't make anything, remaining dissatisfied with the art I was doing, and in the end it was destroyed." The Islamic Revolution in Iran made her an emigrant, and she was only able to visit her homeland in 1990, a year after the death of Ruhollah Khomeini.
Neshat currently lives and works in New York.
Shirin Neshat: Born of Fire is organized by Corinne Erni, Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education, with Scout Hutchinson, Associate Curator of Exhibitions.
Exhibition Support
Lead sponsorship for Shirin Neshat: Born of Fire is provided by Veronica Beard, Agnes Gund, and the Robert Lehman Foundation.
We are grateful for the support of Jacqueline Brody; Alaleh Khatibi and Ariel Ostad; Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder; Sarika Singh and Vivek Bantwal, Goldman Sachs Gives; Fern and Lenard Tessler; Neda Young and Family; Susan and Frank Dunlevy; Yanina Fuertes; Amy and Steven Horowitz; Monika and Deven Parekh; Alexandra Stanton and Sam Natapoff; George Wells and Manfred Rantner; Barbara Hoffman; Nina Yankowitz and Barry Holden; Gladstone Gallery; and Ellen Kern.
We are also grateful to Bri-Tech, Inc.
and The Carpetman for their in-kind support.
The Parrish Art Museum’s programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and by the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District.
The Baer Faxt Podcast
Tune in here as Neshat, in conversation with The Baer Faxt CEO Josh Baer, shares her experiences as an artist-in-exile from her early days in New York City to her globe-spanning multimodal practice today; her thoughts on how the art market has evolved and changed alongside her work; and, the process of putting together her newest retrospective show at the Parrish Art Museum, Shirin Neshat: Born of Fire.
Shirin Neshat
Artist Statement
Rebellious Silence (1994).
B&W RC print & ink, photo by Cynthia Preston.
Copyright Shirin Neshat.
In 1975, Neshat left Iran to study art at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, and Master of Fine Arts degree. Games of Desire, a video and photo essay, was exhibited from September 3 to October 3 at Gladstone Gallery in Brussels and then in November at Galerie Jerome de Noirmont in Paris. After meeting her future husband, who managed the Storefront for Art and Architecture - an alternative space in Manhattan - she dedicated 10 years of her life to working with him at the "storefront," which became the place where her true education began.
Early Career
During this time, she did not make any serious attempts at creating art, and the few small attempts she made were later destroyed.
Rather, her work acknowledges the complex intellectual and religious forces that shape the identity of Muslim women worldwide. Utilizing Persian poetry and calligraphy, she has explored concepts such as martyrdom, exile, issues of identity, and femininity. The project consisted of almost 250 additions and was made by Galerie Jerome de Noirmont.
Neshat's recognition became more international in 1999 when she won the International Prize at the XLVIII Venice Biennale with the works Turbulent and Rapture. He keeps a distance. As a way to cope with the discrepancy between the culture she had witnessed and the pre-revolutionary Iranian culture in which she grew up, she began her first mature work - the Women of Allah series - female portraits completely covered in Persian calligraphy.
His films are culturally specific, but he doesn't have a fashionable interest in Islam. Neshat returned to Iran in 1990, eleven years after the Islamic Revolution, and was shocked by what she saw. This installation reveals Neshat’s influences as well as her championship of lesser-known peers, especially from cultures where censorship impedes free expression.
An internationally acclaimed artist, Neshat has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Art Institute of Chicago; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Serpentine Gallery, London; SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
She stated, "What I like about Kiarostami is that he has created an aesthetic that works so well within limitations. The film, shot in Laos, tells the story of a small group of elderly people who sing folk songs with sexual lyrics - a practice that is becoming outdated.
Career Highlights
In 2001-2002, Neshat collaborated with singer Sussan Deyhim and created the multimedia play "Logic of the Birds," which was produced by curator and art historian Roselee Goldberg.
This film speaks to the world and to my country." The film examines the 1953 British-American coup that overthrew Iran's democratically elected government and replaced it with monarchy.
In July 2009, Neshat participated in a three-day hunger strike at the United Nations headquarters in New York as a protest against the 2009 presidential elections in Iran.
Rapture was Neshat's first attempt at making "pure photography" with the aim of creating an aesthetic, poetic, and emotional shock. The show offers a non-linear survey of Neshat’s artistic development, presenting focused installations of four significant bodies of work. In this collaboration, as well as in her other projects that combine music, Neshat uses sound to help create an emotional, evocative moment that resonates with audiences from both Middle Eastern and Western cultures.
They're journeys, stories, and while they're somewhat specific to Iran, they're also universal." She directed several video works, including Anchorage (1996), Shadow under the Web (1997), Turbulent (1998), Rapture (1999), and Soliloquy (1999).