hirin Neshat is an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker. She will discuss the transition of her work from still photography to video installation, and most recently, to feature-length film. Her directorial debut, Women Without Men, based on a novella by Shahrnush Parsipur that had been banned in Iran, received the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the 2009 Venice Film Festival. Presented by the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department. “Known primarily as a photographer and video artist, Shirin Neshat’s powerful work has explored the realities of gender-segregation and social injustice against the backdrop of an increasingly conflicted modern Islam. The austere, surreal beauty and confrontational poetics of her images — inky, billowing burkas seeming to float through cobblestone streets; crowds of ululating women; still lifes of scripture and heavy weapons — have helped give awareness-raising form to the complexities of East-West and internal conflicts that currently shape global events. Tonight she discusses how all of this relates to her most ambitious, and mainstream, project yet — a full-length feature film adaptation of a controversial Persian author’s novel”.
