Portraits of RESILIENCE

Artist SHIRIN NESHAT looks back at her decades-long practice of CELEBRATING the STRENGTH and COURAGE of WOMEN in her native IRAN.

I grew up in Qazvin, Iran, which was a very religious and conservative city. I don’t know where I got it from, but I had this urge to be an artist. I left Iran in 1975 to study art at the University of California, Berkeley, where I received my Bachelor’s, Master of Arts, and Master of Fine Arts degrees. It was there that I realised my idea of being an artist was purely romantic; I was not good at art at all.

After the revolution in 1987], the United States and Iran severed diplomatic relations, so I didn’t see my family for more than a decade. In 1989, when the first supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini died and was replaced by the current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, it was finally possible for me to return. In 1990, I did.

When I visited, I was shocked and overwhelmed by how religious the country had become. The Islamic Republic had hung banners all over Tehran with antiIsrael and anti-America rhetoric. It was kind of frightening, because even my own sisters and mother were always in hijabs. They were almost unrecognisable... before I left, they were different women,so cosmopolitan. I was very impacted by how Iran had transformed into a different country, and how it impacted women’s lives.

Once I returned to New York, I started to think about making work that reflected upon what I had experienced. I finally became an artist because I had a purpose.