Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat uses photography, film, and video to delve into issues of femininity, religion, identity, exile, and cultural history. She’s particularly interested in the effects of Islamic fundamentalism and militancy, and in the relationship between the personal and the political. In Neshat’s celebrated series “Women of Allah” (1993–97), for example, the artist overlaid black-and-white photographs of veiled Iranian women with words from religious texts. Her film Women Without Men (2009), which won the Silver Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 2009, follows the lives of four women in 1950s Iran. Neshat, who has been based in the U.S. for the majority of her career, has been the subject of exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Stedelijk Museum, among other institutions. She participated in the Venice Biennale in both 1995 and 1999, when she was awarded the First International Prize. She featured in the Whitney Biennial in 2000 and in Documenta 11 in 2002.