Exploring the evolution of film-based arts
The School of Fine Arts and Music invited Iranian-born photographer and filmmaker Shirin Neshat to deliver this year’s Dasha Shenkman Lecture in Contemporary Art on Wednesday, March 8.
The 11th annual lecture at War Memorial Hall was primarily devoted to discussing Neshat’s previous works and her artistic path so far.
Inspired by Islam and the Iranian revolution, Neshat presented multimedia works exploring the struggle between devotion to religion and an awareness of the oppressed individual.Neshat’s photographic work focused heavily on the portrait. Her portraits however, focused solely on the face or the head and shoulders, leaving the background entirely black or white to create a hyperfocus on the subject. These artworks combined this with a superimposing of Iranian poetry over the images. Neshat referred to her work as her own expression of Iranian poetry, celebrating it through an entirely new medium.
Her foray into film furthered her focus on women, with a film devoted to the expression of wanting to break free of forced gender roles, with the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution symbolizing a similar struggle on a grander scale.
This theme is carried into her future works. A series of three short films, including Roja which was shown at the lecture, attempt to portray a series of three dreams of an Iranian woman. These dreams are symbolic in nature like the rest of her work, and attempt to fully tackle the idea of the subjects fears and desires.
These short films are not simply for one to sit back and watch, but rather to fully engage in and decipher. While truly strange, they are undeniably done with an intelligence that makes the viewer want to crack the code through multiple viewings.Neshat’s upcoming feature film was hatched through an interesting process. Originally intended as a biopic of Egyptian actress Umm Kulthum, Neshat wrestled with the fear of portraying her incorrectly and too much in Neshat’s own vision. Instead, the film became that of a filmmaker attempting to make a film about Kulthum. In doing so, Neshat could fully explore her own thoughts, challenges, and desire through a fully fictitious character, as well as avoid misrepresenting Kulthum.
Neshat is a deeply experimental artist with interesting ideas and original thoughts on how to approach them. Her works feature much of an inner struggle with herself rather than against a higher power and portray something very unique in the voice of feminism and freedom-seeking.
For those willing to think about a film or image long after seeing it, Neshat’s goal as an artist is just that; she seeks to have an impact rather than to just entertain.
Photo by Adrian Harder.