Shirin Neshat’s photographs and video installations explore the cultural issues of her native country Iran with a particular emphasis on the experience of women. Growing up in a westernized, upper middle-class family in Iran, Neshat left Iran to study art in Los Angeles in 1974, just before the Iran Islamic Revolution; she did not return until 1990. She began making art about the collision of western and eastern ideologies, which had profoundly impacted her and her family’s lives. Neshat’s work examines the physical, emotional, and cultural implications of veiled women in Iran with written words taken from religious texts. Her subsequent video works departed dramatically from overtly political content or critique, in favor of more poetic imagery and narratives. Her work, which has never been shown in Iran, essentially declares the female presence in a male dominated culture. In her films and photographs, the female gaze becomes a powerful and dangerous instrument for communication. Neshat further explored cultural taboos through video and video installations. In 1999, Neshat won the 48th Venice Biennial prize for her film Turbulent, which contrasts a man singing in front of an all-male audience, with a woman singing to an empty concert hall.
