Aziz Art May 2016

creating stark visual contrasts
through motifs such as light and
dark, black and white, male and
female. Neshat has also made
more traditional narrative short
films, such as Zarin.
The work of Neshat addresses the
social, political and psychological
dimensions of women's experience
in contemporary Islamic societies.
Although Neshat actively resists
stereotypical representations of
Islam, her artistic objectives are
not explicitly polemical. Rather,
her work recognizes the complex
intellectual and religious forces
shaping the identity of Muslim
women throughout the world.
Using Persian poetry and
calligraphy she examined concepts
such as martyrdom, the space of
exile, the issues of identity and
femininity.
In 2001-02, Neshat collaborated
with singer Sussan Deyhim and
created Logic of the Birds, which
was produced by curator and art
historian RoseLee Goldberg. The
full length multimedia production
premiered at the Lincoln Center
Summer Festival in 2002 and
toured to the Walker Art Institute
in Minneapolis and to Artangel in
incorporate music, Neshat uses
sound to help create an
emotionally evocative and beautiful
piece that will resonate with
viewers of both Eastern and
Western cultures. In an interview
with Bomb magazine in 2000,
Neshat revealed, "Music becomes
the soul, the personal, the intuitive,
and neutralizes the sociopolitical
aspects of the work. This
combination of image and music is
meant to create an experience that
moves the audience."
Neshat was profiled in The New
Yorker magazine on October 22,
2007.
When Neshat first came to use film,
she was influenced by the work of
Iranian director Abbas
Kiarostami.She directed several
videos, among them Anchorage
(1996) and, projected on two
opposing walls: Shadow under the
Web (1997), Turbulent (1998),
Rapture (1999) and Soliloquy
(1999). Neshat's recognition
became more international in 1999,
when she won the International
Award of the XLVIII Venice Biennale
with Turbulent and Rapture, a
project involving almost 250 extras
and produced by