Shirin Neshat, Iranian artist. Recipient Infinity award, International Center Photography, 2002, Hiroshima Freedom prize, 2005, Dorothy and Lillian Gish prize, 2006, Women Together award, 2008.
Background
After graduating from high school in 1974, Iranian- born Shirin Neshat left her homeland to study art in the U.S., ultimately at the University of California, Berkeley. She described her 1990 return to Iran as a shock: the Islamic Revolution had brought about the downfall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the end of the monarchy, and the proclamation of the Islamic Republic. Neshat embarked on an artistic career in the midst of profound change, carrying with her the profoundly contradictory experiences in the W. Living in New York since 1996, her work takes a critical look at her traditional roots and social developments in contemporary Islam, with a particular focus on the strictly regimented position of women.
Education
In 1974 she goes to California to study art, later moves to New York City
Career
In 1993, Neshat began work on a series of black-and- white photographs of armed Islamic women in full- length chadors. The uncovered parts of the skin— the face, hands, and feet—bear superimposed Persian texts by Iranian women poets.Though the series Women of Allah (1993-97) made the photographer well known on the Western art scene, her work has never been exhibited in Iran, where the diverse Persian texts about being captive in Iranian culture or the zeal of the Islamic revolution could actually have been read. For most Western viewers, the script comes across as calligraphic ornament. Neshat's earnest portraits of militant women juxtapose femininity with violence, eroticism, innocence, and aggression. Her video works are also characterized by their dichotomies—between Western and Islamic culture, or generally between men and women, individuals and society, control and desire. They are vivid works devoid of words with a powerfully minimalist black-and-white aesthetic.