One of the most interesting exhibitions I’ve seen in January while in Stockholm was the event organised at the Kulturhuset about Iranian artist and director Shirin Neshat.
The top floor of the Kulturhuset was divided in different rooms in which Neshat’s video work "Women Without Men" (2004–2008) was screened.
Born in Iran in 1957, Neshat moved to the United States to study when she was 17.
She returned to her home country in 1990 and found it deeply transformed by the Islamic Revolution.
Finding hard to reconcile the image of the pre-revolution Iran she had left behind with this new country populated by women clad in chadors and burqas, Neshat created her first body of work, the photographic series "Women of Allah" (1993-1997).
The artist analysed in the images she featured in the series the female body in connection with the concept of martyrdom, and created contrasts between the ideas of vulnerable women and of female warriors through pictures of chador-clad women with lines of Perso-Arabic script on their bodies.
As the years passed Neshat began exploring the complex relation between culture, society and religion in video format and, in 1999, won the International Award of the Biennial of Venice with "Turbulent" and "Rapture".
From 2004 she worked on a new project, entitled "Women Without Men" and based on the eponymous book by Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur, written in 1974 and published only in 1989.
"Women Without Men" chronicles the story of different women in the backdrop of the 1953 coup d’état in Iran that removed the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh and reinstalled the Shah in power.
In her work Neshat showed her characters struggle in a society that oppressed them and stripped them of their civil liberties, while tackling issues as disparate as nationality, gender and identities, starting a visual discourse into history and cultural studies and examining the contrasts between male and female spaces and environments.
I loved the poetical elegance of each of the four installations showed at the Kulturhuset, but I was absolutely spellbound by "Mahdokht".
The main character in this installation represents Anahita or Nahid, goddess of fertility and prosperity, and it's a direct reference to the woman in Parsipour's "The Story of Mahdokht" who plants herself on the riverbank in Autumn and eventually metamorphoses into a tree in Spring.
I really liked the way Neshat's installation was presented, with its division on three screens on which three images that perfectly complemented each other were projected side-by-side.
At the very beginning of the film the camera seems to fly over a stream, then passes through a hole and emerges in a garden.
The luxuriant green of the forest contrasts with the bright mimosa yellow wool featured in later scenes with an older Mahdokht sitting cross-legged on the ground, knitting garments for thousands of kids.
The colours Neshat used in this video create an amazing and extremely fascinating visual experience while a mysterious aura looms over the entire film, especially towards the end, when obsessed Mahdokht turns into a sort of surreal human spider as extra pairs of hands protrude from her body allowing her to knit faster.
I found the symbolism, magic realism and supernatural power of this video, but also the style and poetic imagery of Neshat's work incredibly strong and inspiring.
Neshat collided together some of the installations in the "Women Without Men" cycle and included them in the eponymous film co-directed with Shoja Azari that was awarded the Silver Lion for best director at the 2009 Venice Film Festival.
The film has just been released in Italy (as Donne senza uomini) and I hope it will inspire many other directors out there to visually explore vital cultural and gender issues through innovative narrative patterns and techniques.
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Don't know what is wrong what is rite but i know that every one has there own point of view and same goes to this one
Posted by: Moncler Jacke | April 02, 2012 at 07:14 PM