Shirin Neshat

Barbara Gladstone Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of three new films by Shirin Neshat. The Iranian-born artist creates eloquent narratives that address issues of Islamic culture, specifically those of ideology and identity in post-revolutionary Iran.

The films of Shirin Neshat are rare in their ability to tell a particular story that conveys universal meaning. They do not contain dialogue; instead stories are told with poetic devices, with images and music. As Neshat has stated: "It has been a great challenge for me to create a type of narrative that is not tied to language, but rather functions purely on a visual and sonic level. Since the narrative is non-literal, abstract and often quite ambiguous, the viewer must rely heavily on her or his own imagination to draw meanings."

A consistent motif in Neshat's work is that of architecture as a trope for the articulation of space. The artist transfers her 16mm and 35mm films to DVD and projects them in carefully designed spaces that engage the viewer on an emotional and physical level. In opposition to traditional cinema, which enables the viewer to be passive, Neshat invites her viewer to become part of the work, such that one's visceral relationship to the installation is vital.

For this exhibition Neshat presents three single-channel films. She has collaborated with the composer Philip Glass for Passage, which was commissioned for the series "Philip on Film" (to premier at New York's Lincoln Center in the summer of 2001). Shot in Morocco, the 11-1/2 minute color film evokes the journey of life from birth to death and rebirth, with Glass's processional score at once moving and mournful. A group of men dressed in black carries a body on their shoulders from the seashore to the rocky desert, where chador-clad women have knelt in a circle and are furiously digging a grave. Nearby, a young girl sits in front of a mound of rocks and arranges those at her feet into a small circle. As the men approach the women and lay the body to the earth, the girl places a few twigs in her small pit. At this moment, a circle of fire encloses the men and women, a generation lost, leaving only the young girl outside of its wall. Neshat's story of loss, mourning, and renewal is a universal theme.

Possessed (black and white, 9-1/2 minutes) is the story of a woman who appears to have gone mad. Set in an Islamic village, the film begins with the woman alone, outdoors, and unveiled. She looks around with wild eyes uttering strange howls, wails, and moans, and wanders into the village's public meeting place where she is ignored until she climbs a rhetorical stage and wails with her arms outstretched. Her utterings and inappropriate behavior render her a madwoman to the unforgiving crowd that becomes so wrapped up in the mayhem that it does not notice the woman drifting away. With chilling vocal tracks by Sussan Deyhim that are at times synchronized with the woman's utterances and at others a chorus of conflicting cries, this haunting film addresses social ails such as difference, acceptance, and judgement.

The third film Neshat presents is Pulse. Shot in 16mm and in black and white, the 7-1/2 minute story is set in the dimly-lit bedroom of a woman, in her private space. As she sits alone and becomes aroused by a man's voice emanating from the radio, she begins singing back to him. Her fantasy and desire are expressed through the passionate singing of her soul and the steady pulse of the soundtrack.

Shirin Neshat was born in Qazvin, Iran in 1957. She moved to the United States in 1974 and lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: Kanazawa Contemporary Art Museum, Japan; Pitti Discovery, Florence; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (traveled to Serpentine Gallery, London; and Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg); Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Matrix Gallery, UC Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; Wexner Center, Columbus, OH; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden; Tate Gallery, London; and Whitney Museum of American Art, Philip Morris Branch, New York. Pressetext

Shirin Neshat