SHIRIN NESHAT : A LOVE STORY TWO WORLDS APART- IRAN AND THE STATES

Featured Image: Courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar

Shirin Neshat, internationally acclaimed Iranian visual artist, is currently the subject of a one-woman show titled “I Will Greet the Sun Again.”

It is the largest exhibition to date for the New York-based artist and it has premiered at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, from where it has now made its way to The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, in Texas, continuing her tour.

The artist is best known for having produced sumptuous films and photographs that explore the nature of political conflict, personal longing, power and exile for more than three decades.

IRAN, BETWEEN HER LOVE AND OTHER’S HATE

„I will greet the sun again” includes personal work made specifically about living outside of Iran during some of the most turbulent times in the country’s and will also concentrate on global political events such as 9/11, the Arab Spring, and the current xenophobia that immigrants have to face in the United States.

Four galleries in the exhibition feature work never-before-seen in the United States, including a body of portraits made in Iran that Neshat has never shown publicly.

Shirin has declared multiple times that for art to take place, the artist has to accept to use their work as a way of channeling their feelings and experiences, more like an autobiography.

That’s why, Neshar’s work has a way of presenting a sort of fragile and gentle affair between two countries that have impacted her life so much: her motherland Iran and the adoptive one, United States.

Born in the northern city of Qazvin, Neshat grew up in an era when Iran embraced Western culture far more than it does today.

At 17, she left home to study art in California and enrolled at Berkeley, only to find herself trapped in the U.S. when the 1979 Islamic Revolution made it impossible for her to return home for more than a decade.

The conflict between these two countries is a crucial part of her story. She has lived in the United States for almost 44 years and hasn’t returned to Iran in more than two decades, as her last trip ended with her being detained at the airport because of her work and some of the things she had said about the country.

Her unforgettable black-and-white portraits are among the highlights of „I Will Greet the Sun Again”. They represent the starting point for the exhibition, as it follows the growth of Neshat’s art from deceptively simple still photography to more elaborate video, film, and performance art.

She is used to controversy, as some have accused Shirin of romanticizing violence and terrorism, and the accusations continue to this day. She depicts a certain power, a rebelliousness and madness that has followed her all her life and that she embodies in her female characters, inspired by her nostalgia and her ache for forgotten times.

The exhibition is available at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, in Texas, until May 16, 2021.