Shirin Neshat , born the March 26th 1957 with Qazvin in Iran, is an artist vidéaste who lives with New York. It is known primarily for its films, its Vidéo S and its photographs.

Biography

His/her parents come from an easy medium. His/her father was a very respected physicist and his/her mother dealt with the hearth. She grew in an occidentalized family which appreciated the vision of the choice of company of the Shah of Iran. Neshat said about his/her father, “it has phantasm the west, romantized the west, and slowly rejected its own values; thus were my two parents. What occurred, I think, is that their identity is slowly dissolved, they exchanged it for comfort. They served their class. ” (Mackenzie 3). In this will of occidentalization of Neshat, it was registered in a Catholic school of Teheran. It found environment cold and hostile in comparison with its family hearth. Among the elements of the occidentalization of his father, there was the acceptance of a form of feminism to the Western one. The father of Neshat encouraged his daughters “to be individual, to take risks, to learn, see the world. ” (MacDonald 3), and contrary to the conventional practice of the time, it sent his daughters as well as its sons to the university to make higher learning.

Shirin Neshat left Iran to study art with Los Angeles. It was at that time that the Iranian revolution occurred. One of the effects of the political changes after the revolution, was that his/her father who had been financially easy, due to withdraw himself and leave without advantages and to have thin wages (MacDonald 4). Once the finished Revolution, and the company restructured in traditional Islamic nation, its family did not have any more the possibility of maintaining the standard of living which was theirs under the Shah. Approximately a year after the Revolution, Shrin Neshat settles with San Francisco, in the district of bay, and started to study with the Dominican College . Thereafter, it was registered with the Université of Berkeley where it obtained its various diplomas BA, MY and MFA (equivalents of the licenses and controls in France in the artistic formations).

Its artistic course

After its academic works, it leaves for New York and starts to work for a non-profit organization called Storefront Art and Architecture . This multidisciplinary organization exposes it to other ideas, and becomes a place where it acquires concepts which will form part later of its work. At the same time, it creates its first artistic works which will be destroyed later. In 1990, it turns over in Iran. It makes the experiment of the gap between contemporary Iran and that of before the Revolution in lequelle it had been high. From this observation and this shock will be born its first recognized work: photographs of the series The Women off Allah ( Women of Allah ) presenting portraits women entirely covered with Penmanship Farsi.

After being itself devoted to photography, it uses starting from the middle of the years 1990, it video like support of creation. She carried out thus Anchorage (1996), and proposes installations where are projected two vidéos: Shade under the Web (1997), Turbulent (1998), Rapture (1999) and Soliloquy (1999). Its work refers to the social, cultural codes and monks of the Moslem companies, and with the complexity of certain oppositions, such as man and woman. Neshat often underlines this topic by showing two films, out of two screens side-by-side or facing, perfectly coordinated, thus creating of violent one visual contrasts with oppositions such as the light and the darkness, the black and the white, the man and the woman. Neshat also made of short narrative film, more traditional, like the recent film Zarin .

The work of Shirin Neshat treats social dimensions, policies and psychological of the life of the women in the contemporary Islamic companies. Neshat resists highly the stereotyped representations of Islam, its objectives artistic are not formally polemical. More exactly, its work recognizes the complexity of the intellectual and religious forces forming the identity of the Moslem women in the world.

Shirin Neshat became internationally known in 1999, when it obtained the price of the 18th Biennale de Venise with Turbulent , and Rapture , a project with 250 observers, produced by the gallery Jerome de Noirmont; it had met a great success of the critic and the public after his world preview at the institute of art of Chicago in May 1999. With Rapture Neshat tried for the first time to pay great attention to the image, with the intention to create an esthetic, poetic, and emotional shock.

Works

• Turbulent , 1998. Video installation with two screens.
• Rapture , 1999. Video installation with two screens.
• Passage , 2001. Video installation.
• Logic off the Birds , 2002. Multi-media performance.
• The Last Word , 2003. Video installation.
• Mahdokht , 2004. Video installation with three screens.
• Zarin , 2005. Video installation.

• Expressing the inexpressible DVD : Shirin Neshat. , 2004,42 minutes, Gluer. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences. Product for Westdeutscher Rundfunk in 2000.

External bonds

• Photography of Shirin Neshat
• Forum of the images
• Shirin Neshat with the gallery Jerome de Noirmont, Paris
• Shirin Neshat with the gallery Barbara Gladstone, New York
• Arthur Danto Shirin Neshat interview
• '' Time '' profiles, photo essay and interview (08/2000)

Source

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