Apr 2004 - Issue 4

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An Interview with Shirin Neshat

New York-based Neshat was born in 1957, and went to the U.S. in 1974 to study art. She was exiled five years later by the Islamic Revolution, unable to go back until 1990. She didn't recognize the Iran to which she returned. Neshat was so deeply affected by her homeland's radical transformation, she set out to explore Islam through her art. Neshat spoke with Time's Susan Horsburgh in London.

TIME: Why did you begin your Women of Allah series?

Neshat: On a very personal level I had a lot of questions I needed to answer for myself ... The Revolution had transformed the country. My work was really coming to terms with the ideology of the Islamic regime and the Revolution ... I was making it for myself. I was more trying to raise questions as opposed to answering them. So these images have that kind of naiveté of an artist living abroad, returning and very sincerely wanting to understand.

TIME: How is the Iran of today different from the country of your childhood?

Neshat: During the Shah's regime, we had a very open, free environment. There was a kind of dilution between West and East — the way we looked and the way we lived. When I went back everything seemed changed. There seemed to be very little color. Everyone was black or white. All the women wearing the black chadors. It was immediately shocking. Street names had changed from old Persian names to Arabic and Muslim names ... This whole shift of the Persian identity toward a more Islamic one created a kind of crisis. I think to this day there's a great sense of grief that goes with that.

TIME: Do you regret leaving?

Neshat: Leaving has offered me incredible personal development, a sense of independence that I don't think I would have had. But there's also a great sense of isolation. And I've permanently lost a complete sense of center. I can never call any place home. I will forever be in a state of in-between.

One constantly has to negotiate back and forth between one culture and the other and often they're not just different, they're in complete conflict ... Now that I have gained a sense of individualism being in America it's really hard for me to give all of that up and be in places where that doesn't exist. But it's also very satisfying to be part of a collective where individual interest doesn't drive the whole thing ... The work is more and more [about] my desire for reconciliation with my past and my culture.

TIME: Why are people in the West so fascinated by Islam?

Neshat: It's so different from what they are. When you look at a culture that is so different, you start questioning yourself ... The way in which Islamic ideology has been growing rapidly around the Middle East is [seen as] a threat ... It's not even religion. It's like the Soviet Union, communism, which was once a threat. I think that Islam is very often dismissed because that ideology doesn't fit into the kind of rationality that the western world has.

TIME: Are you trying to upset the stereotypes?

Neshat: I'm an artist so I'm not an activist. I don't have an agenda. I'm creating work simply to entice a dialog and that's all. I do tend to show the stereotype head on and then break it down. There's the stereotype about the women — they're all victims and submissive — and they're not. Slowly I subvert that image by showing in the most subtle and candid way how strong these women are.

TIME: Why are the women holding guns in your photographs?

Neshat: It's addressing the topic of the Revolution and the fact that we cannot separate ideas of religion and spirituality from politics and violence. It very much deals with that idea of martyrdom, which can be identified as terrorism. I'm trying to present this paradox where a typical martyr stands on the border of love of God and devotion and faith on one hand and crime and cruelty and violence on the other ... They're willing to commit a crime because they love God. That is such a strange ideology and that can only be understood from the Islamic perspective if you look at their history ... the obsession with death and a rejection of the material world. You live your whole life to promote Islam and when you die you get rewarded. So you're congratulated for your death, which is a very bizarre mentality.

TIME: Where did you get the idea for Turbulent, the first of the trilogy?

Neshat: It was inspired by the fact that women are forbidden from performing or recording music [in Iran] ... If music is an expression of mysticism and spirituality, how interesting that the man could have that experience but the woman could not. How does a woman go about having that experience of mysticism? ... The woman [in Turbulent] breaks all the rules, first by appearing in a theater where she's not supposed to be. But then her music breaks all the norms of classical music. It's not tied to language. It's improvised. So we create a sense of opposites ... but we also speak about how women reach a certain kind of freedom, how women become incredibly rebellious and unpredictable in this society whereas men end up staying within the conformed way of living.

TIME: How do you want your art to affect people?

Neshat: I like works that take my breath away or make me want to cry ... almost a religious experience. I'm creating a very brief experience for people so they can take away with them not some heavy political statement but something that really touches them on the most emotional level.

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