Shirin Neshat: Body of Evidence Diego Sileo 9788836660537

A multidisciplinary artist, Shirin Neshat (1957, Qazvin) works with photography, video, film and theatre, creating highly lyrical narratives and politically loaded visions that question the themes of power, religion, race and the relationship between past and present, east and west, individual and collective.

The volume, on the occasion of the first major solo exhibition in Italy dedicated to Neshat at PAC Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, spans the artist's more than 30-year career, with almost 200 photographs and ten video installations, collected by the world's most important museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, the Guggenheim, New York and Tate Modern.

Neshat interprets the history and present of her birth country, Iran, and indeed the whole world from the female perspective: from her debut in the 1990s with the Women of Allah series, comprising photographs of women whose bodies are inscribed with poetic calligraphy, to The Fury, a video installation that anticipates the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

Neshat's work, however, goes beyond the theme of gender and uses male/female dualism as a starting point for exploring the tension between belonging and exile, sanity and insanity, dream and reality.

Text in English and Italian.

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian-born American artist whose photography, video, and feature films investigate how women find freedom in repressive societies. Her parents were supporters of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the shah (king) of Iran. His social and legal reforms furthered the emancipation and enfranchisement of women, and the couple insisted that their three daughters receive an education. Neshat attended a Catholic boarding school in Tehran and then emigrated to the United States in 1975 to finish her studies. She graduated from the painting program at the University of California, Berkeley, with a B.A. degree in 1979 and an M.F.A. degree in 1982. In 1983 Neshat moved to New York City and eventually began working at Storefront for Art and Architecture. In 1996 Neshat's art was banned in Iran, and she has considered herself an exile since then. About her work, Neshat stated: "Everything I've done is a celebration of the power of women. The Western world sometimes views Iranian women as victims, and while they've been continuously oppressed by religion and difficult political situations, they've always fought back. They've always broken rules."