Shirin Neshat
Fervor
19.04.01 - 16.06.01
Shirin Neshat
Fervor
April 19. - June 16. 2001
The gallery will be exhibiting one of the latest video installations by the Iranian-American photo- and video artist Shirin Neshat. Her black and white photo series and her video installations all critically investigate the ambivalent role imposed on women living in Iran and other revolutionary Islamic countries.
Fervor is the conclusion of the trilogy of films that began with Turbulent, 1988 and was followed by Rapture, 1999.
As the other films in the trilogy, Fervor visually expresses the physical and social seperation of men and women, charactarising public space in Islamic societies.
In Fervor it is the religious space of the Mosque that is used as a backdrop for the unfurling story about unredeemed love and forbidden sexual desire in the Muslim context where social and religious control is imposed on people.
Though all speech is in Farsi, the video successfully reaches beyond the specific historical, cultural and socio-political ideas of the work. Thus the romantic attraction between the sexes emotionally engages the viewer and functions, successfully, on a trans-cultural level.
The importance of Shirin Neshat's works lies in the fact that she does not voice an opinion of being either pro or against the Islamic rule, but equivocally unveils the complex relation of conservatism versus liberalism and restriction versus emancipation. A cultural duality she herself is an embodiment of, through being Iranian and living in the US, two different cultures altogether.
Shirin Neshat's videos consequently centre on the confrontation between Islamic fundamentalism and the surrounding world of a Western dominance. In reflecting this confrontation her work is exemplary artistic formulations of inter-cultural confrontations - one of the cultural consequences of globalisation.