Shirin Neshat: Born of Fire
At the Parrish Art Museum, Shirin Neshat’s survey traces the emotional and political landscapes of exile.
When we arrived most of the museum was closed to the public, its galleries in transition as the Parrish Art Museum (Water Mill, NY) prepared for upcoming exhibitions. Like many seasonal places, there was a quiet hum of activity—just enough to suggest that the season was about to begin. Still, several galleries at the east end were open, celebrating Shirin Neshat’s thirty-year career, “dedicated to examining contrasts between East and West,” as the exhibition materials put it.
Shirin Neshat: Born of Fire brings together four major bodies of work that span different periods of the artist’s practice. Women of Allah (1993–97) introduces her use of black-and-white photography layered with Persian calligraphy to question the mindset of women who chose to become militants—standing at the threshold of faith, sacrifice, violence, and death. The Book of Kings (2012) draws on Persian epic poetry to reflect on protest and political struggle. Land of Dreams(2019) shifts the focus to the United States, blending photography and film to examine identity and surveillance. Most recently, The Fury (2022–23) offers a visceral portrayal of female political prisoners, using a two-channel video installation to explore trauma, vulnerability, and control.
There’s something revealing about seeing an artist’s work unfold across time. While a single exhibition can offer intensity or focus, a survey offers a broader language of an artist’s practice, revealing how themes—like exile, resistance, and the written word, in Neshat’s case—gain depth through shifts, returns, and dialogue over time.
“The women in my work are all me.” – Shirin Neshat
Land of Dreams is the first time Neshat turns her lens to the United States, where she has lived since her college years. Unable to return to Iran since 1996, she felt increasingly distant from its everyday realities and turned instead to American culture. Filmed in the deserts of New Mexico—a landscape she chose for its visual echo of Iran—the work includes still photography, video, and a feature-length film. Unlike her earlier portraits of friends as mythical figures, here she photographed over 100 strangers and transcribed their dreams into Farsi, with the calligraphy integrated into the background rather than layered over their faces. The result is both intimate and estranged, opening questions about belonging: Are we always connected to where we come from? What shapes our vision? For Neshat, even in America, the world remains refracted through the lens of exile.
The Fury (2022–23), a two-channel video installation, was sparked by the arrest of an Iranian officer in Sweden accused of sexually exploiting female political prisoners. In this work, Neshat explores the lingering trauma of such violence—how, for many women, the aftermath is inescapable, sometimes leading to suicide.
Neshat’s work is deeply personal and shaped by the melancholy of always being an outsider, and the persistent desire to belong somewhere. “The women in my work are all me,” she has said, describing a state of nostalgia that runs through much of her practice. Her images are not drawn from a fresh wound, but from one that continues to shape her vision—a quiet, enduring presence. “As far as I am Iranian, the world will be Iranian,” she once remarked, capturing the emotional gravity of origin and the way exile alters one’s relationship to place. And yet, within that dislocation, her work also gestures toward connection: a belief that memory, language, and art can form another kind of belonging—one not bound by geography, but sustained through expression.
