Shirin Neshat: Land of Dreams

A multimedia portrait of a fictional woman artist caught between two cultures

In her latest body of work, multimedia artist Shirin Neshat (born 1957) turns her focus to the American West. With more than 100 photographs, a two-channel video installation and a feature film, Neshat creates a multilayered look at contemporary America through the eyes of a fictionalized artist. Monumental black-and-white photographs are transformed through Neshat’s use of Farsi text and images that have been hand-drawn onto the picture. The texts represent Neshat’s interpretation of the dreams of the sitter, with references to ancient myths and ideologies. Neshat works and experiments with photography, video and film, imbuing them with highly poetic and politically charged images and narratives that question issues of power, religion, race, gender and the relationship between the past and present, occident and orient, individual and collective through the lens of her personal experiences as an Iranian woman living in exile.