A Gaze through the Veil:

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Turbulence arises. Untied to language or rules, she hums,squeals, howls, grunts, reaches for the microphone, wails andmoans. With all the powers of suppressed passion, sheconveys feelings more eloquent than any words, moreuniversal than any language. (Milani, 2001, p.8)Fig 6: Shirin Neshat, Turbulent, Still from Video Installation, 1998.The singers are complete opposites, the man represents tradition with his foreverconventional love song, while the women who is disobeying the ban on womensinging in public represents the “desire for change” (Zaya, 2005, p.21), but there isnobody to listen to her emotional, angry and distressing song. One can see the femalesinger as a symbol of the rebellious Iranian women, struggling and ever fighting thestrict Islamic regime. But is her voice heard? Is this what Neshat is showing byplacing the women in an empty theatre, that there is no one to listen to her or that noone wants to listen. As Nathalie Leleu states in the essay Shirin Neshat: The imagedisputeThe silent voice is the most important…Turbulent functionslike a double metaphor of women’s oppression and of the veryspecific nature that sex imposes on communication, in whichthe audible confronts the inaudible, the factual opposes theintuitive. (Lileu, 2000, p.9)
One would agree with this viewpoint that the woman waiting in silence and then theman listening intrigued by her singing is very important, as it symbolizes theoppression and desire for change that is within the Iranian people. Even though themen listened to the male singer’s performance they were not as intrigued as they arewhen the women began her song. Is this reaction a symbol of want, want for changeand a want to break the laws of the strict Islamic regime that controls their actions andcommunications? In his essay An Extraordinary of the Inward Octavio Zaya believesthat “Turbulent is a reflection on the tension that might help collapse the boundariesbetween those who have power and those who don’t, and on the pushes and pulls thatcontribute to the disintegration of the assumed boundaries between desire andrepression, seduction and destruction, sex and violence.”With its minimalist plot, Turbulent depicts the renewed banning on women’s publicsinging, which took place in 1979 after the revolution. The power and emotiondisplayed in the woman’s refusal to be silenced. In Iran, a woman is not onlyregulated on her physical concealment within the chador which I have discussed inthe last chapter, but also on the regulation of her own voice. If a woman is to allowherself to speak freely in public, she is seen as a “nag and a long tongued woman”(Milani, 2001, p.9). This restriction on free speech and free expression is Neshatsprimary concern in this film. But Neshat does not only deal with the censorship that isinflicted on Iranian women, but also with the issues of sex-segregation and spatialissues. She addresses this division of sexes by her use of two-channel installation.Fig 7: Shirin Neshat, Turbulent, Still from Video Installation, 1998.
Page 4 and 5: Introduction“In any society, the
Page 6 and 7: Chapter One: The Oppressed and the
Page 8 and 9: fundamentalist values. Khomeini sta
Page 10 and 11: In June 1993, sixty Hezbollahis att
Page 12 and 13: depicted wearing the chador and eve
Page 14 and 15: the Shah and it was also seen as a
Page 16 and 17: Fig.2. Persepolis, Film Still, 2007
Page 18 and 19: Chapter Two: Repressed or PowerfulI
Page 20: the men.” (Tenaglia, 2002, p.97)
Page 25: Chapter Three: Structures of Oppres
Page 29 and 30: oundaries. They pray, beat drums an
Page 31 and 32: Iran. It shows us the separation of
Page 33 and 34: Shirin Neshat’s work deals with i
Page 36 and 37: Reference ListBalaghi, S. (2002)
Page 38: Tenaglia, S. (2002) ‘The Power of

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