Art Tuesday: Shirin Neshat شیرین نشاط
"My only advice is to spend less time on thinking about success and put all the energy into making art itself. Otherwise your relationship to your art changes. It becomes less genuine and honest. Art should not be born from a pressure of becoming successful but something deeper. This is always a danger and the cause for mediocrity in art." -Shirin Neshat
Shirin Neshat شیرین نشاط was born in Qazvin, Iran. Her father's love for western culture, lead him to encourage his daughters to “be an individual, to take risks, to learn, to see the world”. She left home right before the Revolution. Her family suffered the economic impact of the revolution and the new Islamic Government. Instead of coming home, she began studying at Dominican College. Eventually, she enrolled in UC Berkeley and completed her BA, MA, and MFA.After moving to New York and marrying a Korean curator, Kyong Park, director and founder of Storefront for Art and Architecture. In 1990, she returned to Iran and was confronted with what she remembered and what it is now. The Women of Allah series was born after that trip, as a way of coping with the discrepancy between the culture that she experienced and that of the pre-revolution Iran in which she was raised.
Her pieces are simple yet charged with social, cultural and religious codes of Muslim societies and the roles of men and women within. Using stark visual contrasts like light and dark, black and white, male and female, she emphasizes this theme. It also deals with the political and psychological dimensions of women experiences in contemporary Islamic Societies. She resists stereotypical representations of Islam, instead, her work deals with the complex intellectual and religious forces shaping the identity of Muslim women. She adds Persian poetry and calligraphy as a way to portrait concepts such as martyrdom, the space of exile, identity and femininity.But how about hearing it from her own voice?
I love her work. She helped me deal with my thesis, especially with the identity crisis this one provoked in me. She can be so powerful and present a cruel reality in a very poetic way without offending the bodily codes of the Islamic Woman. A genius, inspired and motivated only by the desired to deal with her own confusions. Truly inspiring!If you want to know more, please visit Shirin Neshat.