Shirin Neshat in Qatar

Shirin Neshat, a 53-year old Iranian visual artist, well-known for her works in film, video and photography, presented today at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. Her feature-film debut, "Women Without Men", will be screened tomorrow at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar at 2:00 PM.

Shirin was born in Iran in a family which adored the Shah of Iran and the western values he propagated. She did her higher studies in the United States and completed her BA, MA and MFA from UC Berkley; eventually she returned to Iran after the Islamic revolution. Shirin’s work tries to untangle the ideology of Islam through art. Her first works started with photographic series, but she also branched out to films later.

Her earlier works were more of a personal nature; they explored the lack of connection she felt with the post-revolution Iran, but over time her art became more political in nature which coincided how the Government of Iran evolved into being more oppressive and intrusive. Her works have come to encompass male-female dynamics in contemporary Islam. All her works express deeply poetic, philosophical, metaphorical and complex levels of intellectual abstraction. She also took part in a three-day hunger strike at the United Nations headquarters in New York in protest of the 2009 Presidential elections, cementing her popularity in the western world and firmly entrenching her against the politics of her native country.

Looking at her work, it is very obvious that she is trying to explore the concept of feminism in Islam. A woman with an abaya and Quranic verses written on her face, make an unusual and controversial combination. Similarly, an Arabic inscripted hand holding a gun, ties into the contemporary western view of Islam. Most of her work is in an abstract black and white form. Women, Abayas, Quranic verses seem to be a recurring theme in her work. A lot of her work can be classified as modern artwork; a person is free to infer any personal meaning from her work.