22 Facts About Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian photographer and visual artist who lives in New York City, known primarily for her work in film, video and photography.

Shirin Neshat is the fourth of five children of wealthy parents, brought up in the religious city of Qazvin in north-western Iran under a "very warm, supportive Muslim family environment", where she learned traditional religious values through her maternal grandparents.

Shirin Neshat's father was a physician and her mother a homemaker.

Shirin Neshat was enrolled in a Catholic boarding school in Tehran.

Shirin Neshat sent his daughters, as well as his sons to college to receive higher education.

In 1975, Shirin Neshat left Iran to study art at University of California, Berkeley and completed her BA, MA and MFA degrees.

Shirin Neshat graduated from UC Berkeley in 1983, and soon moved to New York City.

Shirin Neshat quickly realized that making art wasn't her profession then.

Shirin Neshat was intimidated by the New York art scene and believed her art was not substantial.

In 1990, Shirin Neshat returned to Iran, one year after Ayatollah Khomeini's death.

In 1993 Shirin Neshat began earnestly to make art again, starting with photography.

Shirin Neshat's work refers to the social, cultural and religious codes of Muslim societies and the complexity of certain oppositions, such as man and woman.

Shirin Neshat often emphasizes this theme by showing two or more coordinated films concurrently, creating stark visual contrasts through motifs such as light and dark, black and white, male and female.

Shirin Neshat has made more traditional narrative short films, such as Zarin.

When Shirin Neshat first came to use film, she was influenced by the work of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.

Shirin Neshat directed several videos, among them Anchorage and, projected on two opposing walls: Shadow under the Web, Turbulent, Rapture and Soliloquy.

Shirin 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 the Galerie Jerome de Noirmont which met with critical and public success after its worldwide avant-premiere at the Art Institute of Chicago in May 1999.

In July 2009, Shirin Neshat took part in a three-day hunger strike at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in protest of the 2009 Iranian presidential election.

In 2022, Neshat participated in the group exhibition "Eyes on Iran" at Franklin D Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park, Roosevelt Island, New York; in response to the Mahsa Amini protests.

Shirin Neshat was an artist in residence at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2000 and at MASS MoCA in 2001.

In 2015, Shirin Neshat was selected and photographed by Annie Leibovitz as part of the 43rd Pirelli Calendar.

At the 2017 Salzburg Festival, Shirin Neshat directed Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida, with Riccardo Muti as conductor and Anna Netrebko singing the main character.