The exhibition ends February 16th, 2020. Exhibition tickets costs $20 unless you visit during the following free days: January 30, February 6, and February 13
Welcome to 2020! We got off to a rocky start this year concerning all-things Iranian, but a few nights ago, I was in a space that not only felt regenerative, but reaffirming in terms of my own Iranian identity. I’m talking about the new Shirin Neshat exhibition, “I Will Greet the Sun Again,” at The Broad Museum (pronounced Brohd for those of you who haven’t been). This new collection features works by Neshat, whose photographic and cinematic oeuvre focuses on themes of exile, womanhood, solidarity, displacement, and identity…in other words, all the topics I’m about.
It was an impressive exhibit, not just in terms of the assortment of old favorites like her Women of Allah series (1993-97), wherein she explores women’s identities in a post-1979 Iran, but also newer works that expand on her meditations on exile. Using mixed medium approaches that draw on photography, Persian calligraphy, and film, she artfully and meaningfully investigates Iranian women’s agency, particularly as it relates to changing Iranian culture and Islamic ideals. Rather pointedly, she has in the past undercut orientalist approaches to sensationalizing the veil, often denying a western, male gaze in her depictions of the chador as simultaneously freeing for some and still, perhaps, imposing for others. This duality, in addition to clever reversals of the male gaze (as her female subjects often reject and return it with a challenging stare) offers a complexity for discussions about the veil, especially during the 1990s. Neshat has been especially skilled at denying orientalist tropes that eroticized the veil and posed it as a signifier for sexuality and shame.
One of my personal favorites is a silver gelatin print (below) from her Soliloquy Series (1999) wherein she models for her own work in a chador, juxtaposed against an imposing, modernist building in New York. For the series, she explores life in exile as an Iranian who is elsewhere, photographing herself against a series of schools, mosques, government buildings, and landscapes captured in New York and Turkey. As an artist who was living in the US during the 1979 Revolution and in predominately in self-imposed exile since then, her work touches on the melancholic confusion and nostalgia for those living outside Iran. About the series, she touches on the fragmentation (my fav. theme) inherent for many in the diaspora, noting, “Through the opposition of East and West, modern and traditional, displacement and memory, biography and history…Soliloquy aims to offer a glimpse into the experience of a divided self in need of repair…standing at the threshold of two worlds, apparently tormented in one but excluded from the other.”
Goodman Gallery, 1999
Silver gelatin print
50 3/5 × 66 × 2 in
128.6 × 167.6 × 5.1 cm
Fans will not only be excited about revisiting these past favorites, but also meeting new ones that further explore what it means to be “different” in both exile and in the diaspora. Her two new short films, Land of Dreams (2019) and The Colony (2019) cleverly follow an Iranian, female photographer, Simin (played by Sheila Vand, who in my opinion, redeems herself post-Argo) as she poses as an art student taking photographs of strangers she meets throughout New Mexico. Using the opportunity to photograph them in their homes as a ruse, she instead tries to get them to disclose their latest dream. The first film concludes with her entering a facility without the audience knowing why or what will ensue there. The second film, The Colony, picks up this thread and shows us the sterile, inner world of a processing plant for dreams by people like Simin. Surrounded by an all-Iranian colony (played by Iranian and non-Iranian actors), they are dream-catchers in the flesh, and they meticulously record the dreams of the people that they meet. While the dialogue of the first film takes place entirely in English as Simin interviews Americans she comes across in a beautifully black-and-white contrasting New Mexican landscape, The Colony, is filmed wholly in Persian. Without giving any more plot points away, we delve into the dimensions between dreams and reality, and life experiences facing those who fear loss or have lost. We see through the eyes of an indigenous woman who recalls her nightmare of not finding her little girl (though she is very much alive in the present day), a military man who engaged in nuclear testing in the desert (who fears an impending nuclear apocalypse), and lastly, an Eastern European woman who cannot find her village (no matter whom she asks or where she goes). It is this last story in which Simin loses herself, alerting her superiors to disaster because dream-catchers must never enter dreams. Their fate is a fate worse than any punishment or death; ultimately, they suffer from madness.
After viewing these beautiful film installations, you can then explore rooms that recreate portraitures of those whose dreams have been caught and processed in the plant. Having visited New Mexico, Arizona, and Las Vegas, Neshat offers a diverse collection of portraits belonging to those scattered throughout a Western American landscape. About these films and photographic collections, Neshat has said: “For the first time…I dare to make art directly related to the social and political realities of the United States. In the face of major cultural changes in America since the Trump administration, I felt strongly that the subject of social injustice, both in respect to immigrants and Americans, particularly those living in poverty in the middle of America, calls for an artistic response, even if in a fictionalized manner.” Truly, she is an incredible artist emblematic of our time, using art to recall feelings of loss, inspire hope, and challenge political injustice.
If I may make a suggestion, consider viewing the exhibit while listening to Niyaz’ Best of album (2017). Like a fine wine and cheese, these two examples of Iranian diasporic cultural productions pair well together. If you aren’t familiar, Niyaz is an electronic world fusion group founded by Iranian refugees, Azam Ali & Loga Ramin Torkian, in collaboration with US producer, Carmen Rizzo. With hauntingly beautiful vocals in Persian, Urdu, and Turkish, it’s the perfect soundtrack for experiencing these impactful works.
Self-portrait in front of Soliloquy series
