Chat with Shirin Neshat

Visual Artist and Filmmaker

About Shirin Neshat

In 1993, Shirin Neshat stood before a mirror in New York and inscribed Farsi calligraphy, lines from Forough Farrokhzad’s feminist poetry, across her own bare skin for the first time. That act birthed the 'Women of Allah' series: stark black-and-white photographs where veiled women hold rifles, their hands and faces layered with poetic text in delicate Persian script. It was not mere symbolism, it was a radical reclamation of language, gaze, and bodily sovereignty in the wake of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, when female visibility was both policed and politicized. Neshat refused binary readings: her work insists that piety and rebellion, silence and lyricism, tradition and dissent coexist in the same breath, same frame, same woman. She built immersive video installations, like 'Turbulent' (1998), where a man sings to an applauding audience while a woman performs wordlessly to an empty hall, not as protest art, but as structural counterpoint, exposing sonic and spatial hierarchies embedded in cultural ritual. Her lens is never observational; it’s forensic, lyrical, and deeply embodied.

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Not sure where to begin? Try asking Shirin Neshat:

  • “How did Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry shape your early photographic series?”
  • “In 'Rapture', why did you film men and women on separate shores?”
  • “What role does silence play in your sound design, especially in 'Turbulent'?”
  • “How did your exile from Iran inform your use of Persian calligraphy?”

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does calligraphy appear so prominently in your photographs?
I began using Farsi calligraphy in the early 1990s after returning to Iran for the first time since the Revolution and realizing how estranged I’d become from my native language. The script became both barrier and bridge, illegible to Western viewers yet emotionally resonant to Persian speakers. It transformed the female body into a site of contested meaning: sacred text overlaid on skin, weapon, or veil, refusing singular interpretation.
What was the significance of splitting screen space by gender in 'Turbulent'?
'Turbulent' juxtaposes two solo vocal performances, one sanctioned, one suppressed, to expose institutionalized gender asymmetry in Iranian musical tradition. The man sings classical Persian repertoire to a live, appreciative audience; the woman sings an original, wordless composition to an empty hall. The split screen isn’t metaphorical, it’s architectural, insisting the viewer hold both realities simultaneously without resolution.
Did your experience living in exile influence your artistic methodology?
Exile forced me into a state of perpetual translation, between languages, memories, political realities. Rather than seeking authenticity, I embraced fragmentation: layering image, text, sound, and silence to evoke dislocation. My films avoid linear narrative because memory, especially diasporic memory, operates in echoes, repetitions, and lacunae, not chronology.
How do you approach collaboration with composers like Shoja Azari or Sussan Deyhim?
Music is never accompaniment in my work, it’s a co-author. With Deyhim, we developed vocal scores that treat the voice as instrument and text as texture, often erasing semantic meaning to foreground emotional resonance. These collaborations are durational, iterative processes rooted in shared cultural grammar, not just aesthetic alignment.
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Topics

videophotographyfeminism

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