Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian artist based in New York City. After completing her art education at UC Berkeley Neshat moved to New York City where she ran the alternative art space, Storefront for Art and Architecture, in Soho with her husband and one of the co-founders, Kyong Park, from the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s. After this hiatus, Neshat began seriously making work again in the early 1990s after she returned from a trip to Iran, a country that had changed drastically since she had grown up there as a child, and an experience that has strongly influenced her work in video, film, and photography. Neshat gained early critical acclaim for her “Women of Allah” (1993-97) series of black and white photographs that depicted Islamic women, atop of which Neshat painted Persian calligraphy, exploring the relationship between femininity and Islamic culture. Neshat’s work has continued to examine the complexity of Islamic cultures and societies as well as that of female identity and experience, in addition to dealing with issues around exile and the political circumstances of her birthplace, Iran. Neshat was one of four Iranian-born artists who collaborated to create Logic of the Birds, a multimedia project that combined film, live performance and music to explore 12th century Persian mysticism’s relationship to contemporary Iranian society, which took place at The Kitchen in October 2001. For more information please visit: https://gladstonegallery.com/artist/shirin-neshat