Past Exhibition

Shirin Neshat: Women Without Men
November 1, 2008 - February 7, 2009

As part of the citywide biennial, Prospect.1 New Orleans, the Newcomb Art Gallery will exhibit Shirin Neshat: Women Without Men by internationally renowned artist Shirin Neshat.

The exhibition consists of four video installations from an on-going film project inspired by Shahrnush Parsipur’s surrealist novel Women Without Men (Zanan Bedun-e Mardan), banned by the Iranian government in 1989.  In each installation, the artist explores single narratives from the author’s interwoven tale of outcast Iranian women to comment on the lives of real women in traditional Muslim societies.
        
Shirin Neshat was born in Qazvin, Iran—a center of textile trade 100 miles northwest of Tehran—in 1957.  Moving to California at age 17, she received her M.F.A. from the University of California–Berkeley in 1983, and soon after moved to New York.  In 1990, she visited her home country for the first time in more than 10 years, and the experience was transformative.  Radically altered by the Islamic Revolution and its fundamentalist regime, Iran’s cultural and political landscape deeply disturbed, yet also intrigued, the artist. 

For more information about the artist and her work, please click here.

Prospect.1 New Orleans is the largest international art biennial ever held in the United States. It is presenting 81 artists in more than 25 venues to reach an estimated audience of 100,000 visitors.


        

Shirin Neshat, Munis & Revolutionary Man, 2008, c-print & ink. Images Courtesy Gladstone Gallery.