‘I want to unleash rage’: Iranian exile Shirin Neshat on her film about veils, prison and rape
The artist is returning to the inflammatory approach that caused a storm in the 1990s – with a harrowing film about a woman the Iranian authorities try to crush
Every Iranian woman is a threat,” says Shirin Neshat, “just by being a woman.” The artist is wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Woman, Life, Freedom” – the slogan of the protest movement that erupted a year ago in Iran, following the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who allegedly flouted her country’s strict dress code. Since 1981, veiling in public has been mandatory for every Iranian female over the age of nine, a law enforced by the “morality” police.
Neshat, speaking via Zoom, turns the lens to show me the large, airy warehouse she works in. The artist, now 66, has lived in Brooklyn since the 1990s – longer than she lived in Iran. This week, she returns to Britain to open a new solo exhibition – her last London show, in 2020, was quickly closed down by the pandemic. Its title says a lot: The Fury, featuring a video and a series of photographs, is a blistering attack on Iran’s government, a piercing protest against the use of women’s bodies as battlefields for national politics and personal desires.
