AT THE SMITHSONIAN

Finding a Voice for Iranian Women

Artist Shirin Neshat uses Persian poetry to reveal the conflict between tradition and modernity

Amy Crawford

Contributing Writer

May 2015

Photograph by Larry Burns / © Shirin Neshat / Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels / Hirshhorn Museum, SI

Iranian visual artist Shirin Neshat is renowned for her photography series and films, which often address the social, political and cultural dimensions of women in Islamic societies. Rodolfo Martinez / Hirshhorn Museum, SI

In her series *Our House Is on Fire*, Iranian artist Shirin Neshat captures the sense of loss in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution. The feet (above) are inscribed in Persian calligraphy with the poetry of Forough Farrokhzad. Photograph taken by Larry Barns © Shirin Neshat. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels / Hirshhorn Museum, SI

In her video installation *Rapture* (still, above), Shirin Neshat explores women’s experiences in contemporary Islamic societies. Photograph taken by Larry Barns © Shirin Neshat. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels / Hirshhorn Museum, SI

Poetry infuses Persian culture, from its religious mysticism to its contemporary cinema. The Iranian-born, New York-based photographer and filmmaker Shirin Neshat believes that Iran’s history of censorship turned people to metaphor because it conveys “what we cannot say overtly.” Women, of course, have felt especially restricted.

In Untitled (Women of Allah), one from a series on view in a retrospective opening this month at the Hirshhorn Museum, Neshat inscribed selections from a poem by Forough Farrokhzad, the celebrated female Iranian poet, onto a hand pressed to gently closed lips. The passage compares a woman’s desires to a garden dying in the summer heat. Because traditional Persian society compels women to passivity, a simple gesture can have expressive power, Neshat explains. “The hand, the gaze, the mouth—the things that are allowed to be seen are very poignant.”

Shirin Neshat: Facing History

In her mesmerizing films and photographs, Shirin Neshat (Iranian-American, b. 1957, Qazvin) examines the nuances of power and identity in the Islamic world--particularly in her native country of Iran, where she lived until 1975.