Shirin Neshat: Fervor and Turbulent

This solo exhibition by photographer and filmmaker Shirin Neshat featured a video projection and a series of large-scale photographs. Neshat was born in Iran in 1957. She came to the United States in 1975 but chose to remain in New York City after the Iranian Revolution (1978-1979). As an internationally celebrated artist known for her artistic and allegorical interpretations of Iranian culture and history, particularly from a woman's point of view, concerns for her safety under the current regime kept Neshat from visiting her native country since 1996.

The exhibition included Our House Is on Fire, a series of 12 monumental black-and-white photographs created in 2013 and inspired by Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and across the Middle East. The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation commissioned this series, and it featured the faces of grieving elderly and impoverished Egyptians who have suffered personal tragedies because of political upheaval. Calligraphic text inscribes each portrait explaining how national calamity has become embedded in the subject’s face.

Neshat’s two-channel video Turbulent focuses on gender relationships in Iran through music and performance. Despite a rich tradition of female performers in Iran, under the current extreme interpretation of Shi’ite law, women are not allowed to sing in public. So in this video, a man performed before an audience while a woman sings a wordless song alone.

-    Curator, Kathy Goncharov