Aziz Art May 2016

Shirin Neshat born 1957 is an
Iranian visual artist who lives in
New York City, known primarily for
her work in film, video and
photography.Her artwork centers
around the contrasts between
Islam and the West, femininity and
masculinity, public life and private
life, antiquity and modernity, and
bridging the spaces between these
subjects. Neshat has been
recognized countless times for her
work, from winning the
International Award of the XLVIII
Venice Biennale in 1999,to winning
the Silver Lion for best director at
the 66th Venice Film Festival in
2009,to being named Artist of the
Decade by Huffington Post critic G.
Roger Denson.
about the west, romanticized the
west, and slowly rejected all of his
own values; both my parents did.
What happened, I think, was that
their identity slowly dissolved, they
exchanged it for comfort. It served
their class”.
As a part of Neshat’s
“Westernization” she was enrolled
in a Catholic boarding school in
Tehran. Through her father’s
acceptance of Western ideologies
came an acceptance of a form of
western feminism. Neshat’s father
encouraged each of his daughters
to “be an individual, to take risks, to
learn, to see the world", and he
sent his daughters as well as his
sons to college to receive their
higher education.
Background
Neshat is the fourth of five children
of wealthy parents, brought up in
the religious town of Qazvin in
north-western Iran under a "very
warm, supportive Muslim family
environment",where she learned
traditional religious values through
her maternal grandparents.
Neshat's father was a physician and
her mother a homemaker. Neshat
said that her father, "fantasized
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