Shrine Neshat was born in a small religious city in Iran. Her father was very fascinated with Western culture and sent Shrine and her siblings to the west to study abroad and learn new things. During this time in Iran, the Islamic Revolution happened, and Shrine found herself to be challenged by the new society and Iranian way of thinking that had changed so drastically from what she remembered. This is when she decided to paint pictures and capture photographs that depicted her dissatisfaction of what her home country was turning into as well as be a voice for the women who could not speak up. She lives in exile now and does most of her artwork in New York or other countries around the world such as Morrocco, Turkey, and Egypt.
Shirin Neshat created a series of paintings called the Women of Allah where she was able to showcase photographs of women from her country to finally speak to an audience. Her photographs were not meant for westerners to feel sorrow and pity for the Muslim women, but to recognize their obstacles as women who are conditioned to live in a government that is critically challenging. Her work breaks stereotypes about Muslim women in the media as silent oppressive beings and shows them as women who are brave and strong fighting their own battles of faith and courage. Neshat allows an audience to make a covered woman speak volumes about not their struggles as someone with faith, but as someone who lives in a society that misuses power.
Neshat shows through the calligraphy on her work that the teachings of the Quran give women rights but the patriarchal values in those societies strip them away. Her paintings are ironic because the words say one thing, but the pain in the faces of the women are speaking to the audience in a different way. Neshat wants audiences to understand that the hijab on these women is not representing submissiveness and inferiority, which is a common misconception in the western world due to clichés and certain media outlooks. Neshat approaches this concept and associates hijab as a political tool. To those who are comfortable with hijab but uncomfortable with patriarchy and misogyny, it is a message to rebel against a government that has done every crime to stay in power. It can also be one big ironical statement. The fact that Islam itself means peace, but the guns and weapons the women are holding contradicts the essence of peace.
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/global-contemporary/a/neshat-rebellious
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