Shirin Neshat is the first artist of Middle East origin and first woman since 2009 to have a solo show at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington.
Ms Neshat is an expatriate Iranian and much of her work is identified with gender politics in the Islamic Republic. After her seminal Women of Allah photographic series, and the two-screen videos – some of which are included below – some critics have “have pounced on later works and dismissed them as the products of a one-trick pony”. When she produced work on Egypt: “it feels like Neshat has simply applied the Neshat brand to another country, processing its suffering in her usual style without adding much to the wall of sad, painfully weary faces”.
Others believe that “the central attributes of Neshat’s work—‘multimedia, diasporic, gender conscious, identity focused’—represent universal preoccupations in 21st-century art”. Besides, just because others have followed in her footsteps doesn’t take away from the originality and importance of the earliest work.
It’s the usual problem for Iranian artists: if their work doesn’t ‘look Iranian’, then viewers are dissatisfied; but if they follow or build on the stereotypes, they are criticised for that. It’s even more of a double-bind for women: if they don’t bang on about gender identity in the Middle East, they’ve let the side down; but if they do …
The Hirshhorn exhibition is organised to follow the modern Iranian historical events being referred to by Neshat. It provides a helpful primer for a Washington audience who surely can’t fail to notice that more history might – just might – be being made with the talks over the sanctions currently going on. Of course, Iranian history is never going to be as simple as that.
For example, Nehshat’s black-and-white 2008 video “Munis” was inspired by the 1953 coup and includes precise restaging of famous news stock: “A large American convertible glittering in sunlight, embodying glamour and power, carries paid-for pro-shah demonstrators as it did at the time. Crowds bearing banners and posters illustrate a brief dawn of free speech and open democracy before the shah’s repressive rule kicks in”. But, as the Wall Street Journal notes, “it’s impossible not to see echoes between [1953 and 1979] – the wild rushing through the streets by crowds oblivious to history’s lessons.”
Can I signpost you to a video about a – quite different – Spanish exhibition of Neshat’s work? Rather than historically spelling out that the Americans are sometimes the baddies, this was focused on the human body It’s theoretically in Spanish, but much is actually in English with Spanish subtitles, and even my very rudimentary Spanish meant that I understood (almost) everything.
Read the Smithsonian review here. And the Wall Street Journal here
If you instead (or as well as!) want to see some excerpts from Neshat’s dual screen videos, try these:
Fervor is the first work of Neshat’s I saw. Repressed sexual tension, anyone?
Or Turbulent. This has two performers – a man singing to a crowd, and a woman not-singing to a not-audience. It’s written about well here