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Indepth Arts News:
"Shirin Neshat: Rapture - Film Installation and Photographs"
2001-06-09 until 2001-09-16
ASU Art Museum
Tempe, AZ,
USA
Shirin Neshat's Rapture is both literally and
figuratively a separation of genders. Neshat's
film installation consists of two large, opposing
projections that depict men and women separated
from each other; while polarized both visually
and spatially, both are kept locked in a dynamic
though subtle interaction that powerfully underscores
gender-based inequalities.
Rapture is a poetic and moving 16mm-film installation
(presented in laser disc format) addressing traditional
gender roles in patriarchal, fundamentalist society, one
that Iranian-born Neshat, who has lived in the United
States since 1974, has experienced. Visiting her homeland
in 1990, after a 12-year absence due to the 1978-79 Islamic
Revolution, she was taken aback by the memory of her homeland
and the changes she saw in a country that was now so
ideologically constricted. Iran had become a country in
which contact between the sexes in public spaces was
considered taboo. The impact of that visit and the potent
influence it has had on the artist's work comes across
unmistakably, without a single word of dialogue.
Shirin Neshat's work was exhibited at the Whitney,
Kwangju, and Sydney Biennial's in 2000; at Venice Biennale,
Carnegie International and The Museum of Modern Art, New York,
in 1999; and the Tate Gallery of Modern Art, London,
and Walker Art Center in 1998.
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