Borders and Boundaries
11/15/19 - We talk with Shirin Neshat about her solo exhibition at the Broad museum in Los Angeles. She's an Iranian-American artist who works in photography and film, using the personal to illuminate social change and political injustice in the Middle East and the United States.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Episode image: Offered Eyes by Shirin Neshat, 1993, courtesy of The Broad
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
I Will Greet The Sun Again, the solo exhibition from Shirin Neshat is on view at The Broad in Los Angeles through February 16, 2020.
Among the pieces in the retrospective:
photographs from her Women of Allah series
her video works including Turbulent
more recent portraiture from Egypt and Azerbaijan
the debut of film and photographic series Land of Dreams
Tickets can be purchased through The Broad.
More films from Shirin Neshat:
TRANSCRIPT: BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES
[Ads]
(0:53)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman. Well I am very excited about our agenda today. I met and spoke with the artist Shirin Neshat.
Aminatou: I love her work. I think the first work of hers I saw was I was -- I was definitely very young and it was the Women of Allah photographic series and I think it wasn't probably until right after 9/11 when a lot of her work came back into resurgence that that photo series really came back to me again. I'm very curious to see this exhibit in LA now because I know that it's a retrospective and I hope that that is part of that.
[Theme Song]
(1:52)
Aminatou: Hi.
Ann: Hello. [Laughs] I like how you sounded surprised that I'm here, like hi, what are you doing at my door?
Aminatou: Are you here? Are you here?
Ann: Like when you call each other at the same time and it just magically connects. Has that ever happened to you?
Aminatou: Right, right. I love that old-school feeling.
Ann: Well I am very excited about our agenda today.
Aminatou: Tell me.
Ann: I met and spoke with the artist Shirin Neshat. I've been a real fan of her work, like not as long as she's been working -- it's not like I got to know her in high school, I was a little bit older -- but I have a very visceral memory of the first time I saw a particular piece of her video art which is like I will kind of do a brief description. A friend showed me on YouTube, so I did not have a gallery experience, but it's called Turbulent. It is in fact her first video work after she'd been making mostly portraits, like photographic work, for several years at that point. And in this video it's kind of a split screen. On one side you have a man who is singing and his voice is beautiful and behind him you can see an audience, an almost full audience of other men who are listening to him perform and hanging on his every note.
And then on the other side of the split screen while he is singing you just kind of see a shadowy -- like a figure, kind of the outline of a human. And then the man concludes his song and the lights kind of come up on the other side and you see that it is a woman and she begins to sing. And the tenor of her song is much different, you know? It sounds more wild. There's kind of like an edge of desperation but it's like really powerful and really beautiful. And notably behind her all the seats are empty so she is singing to an empty room.
(3:50)
And some combination of all of these elements I just -- I found so profound and I really . . . it's something that I have returned to and shared with a lot of other friends. I mean I'm not alone in finding this work really, really meaningful. But anyway she is known for video art like this that primarily deals with topics like women's lives in Iran. Shirin was born in Iran in the late '50s and has lived in the United States since the late 1970s. She also makes a lot of work that deals with topics like exile and isolation and political revolution. She now mostly makes work outside of Iran, I mean and has for most of her career, but she has portrait series that are featuring a bunch of folks involved in Egyptian like pro-democracy movements and activists in Azerbaijan. She also has some incredible video art pieces set in Morocco. You know, she is everywhere and she really has this way of making art that feels so thoroughly political but is not like hello, it is I, a piece of political art like bonking you over the head with this idea. And so she really walks this line so beautifully. Sorry for rambling forever. Are you a fan of her work too?
Aminatou: Yeah, I mean I love her work. The first work of hers I saw, I was definitely very young and it was the Women of Allah photographic series that she made that is really just about -- it's funny because at the time I was like it's about the changing cultural landscape in the Middle East which is still changing. But I remember just being very, very struck by this photo series. So it's basically photos of Muslim women that are overlaid with calligraphy and it looks very sparse and like measured and symmetrical. It's mostly photos of women in chadors and then there is this calligraphy that is overlaid over it and a lot of the -- a lot of it I think challenged me at the time to really think about the gaze of Muslim women and it's just something I remember being . . . I remember being very shook by as a young person and not really being like okay, this is part of my identity but also something very modern and violent is happening here in a way that I don't know. I don't quite know how to think about.
(6:10)
And I think it wasn't probably until right after 9/11 when a lot of her work came back into resurgence that hat photo series really came back to me again. I think it's definitely one of her earlier works because it's from the '90s and it's one that whenever people talk about the cool new sexy stuff that she's into I always think of that and I am very curious to see this exhibit in L.A. now because I know that it's a retrospective and I hope that that is part of that.
Ann: Well I can tell you it definitely is.
Aminatou: Yes!
Ann: Yes. And the scale of the photos is absolutely breathtaking. So if you're in L.A. I highly recommend checking it out and the rest of us can listen to my conversation with Shirin which we did in person at the Broad.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: First we just want to thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show.
Shirin: Thank you for having me.
Ann: I want to start maybe a little selfishly by asking you about your piece Turbulent which was my introduction to your work and the very first time I saw it and every time since including about three minutes ago I have really been very, very deeply moved. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the genesis of that work.
Shirin: First of all Turbulent which was made in 1998 is my first video -- my first entry into the moving picture. And I had been doing a lot of still photography and I felt a certain exhaustion from that kind of work so I made the bold decision to try something new.
(7:45)
But thematically I was really fascinated by how women in Iran are forbidden to publicly sing and that men are allowed. And I found it would be interesting to make a work that sort of critiques the kind of music that you can predict from someone that has the freedom -- the musical freedom -- versus the person who doesn't, you know?
And because I've been very interested in the issue of feminism and how the issue of the woman in not just all Islamic cultures but in the Iranian society and I'm also very much interested in how women regardless of all the oppression find a way to be very rebellious and defiant.
So at the end we end up making a work that thematically it showed a man first singing this very beautiful traditional song, very classical and people loved it and it is a beautiful song -- poetry -- by Rumi. And the woman quietly listens. But then when it came to her turn which she had no ideas the music broke every rule of music. There was no language; it was purely guttural. But yet it was so powerful and basically put the man in his place.
Ann: [Laughs]
Shirin: So I was very interested in this notion of opposites, male and female, traditional and not traditional, conformist, the rebellious, and how at the end symbolically it sort of represented where the women were in the society versus the men and how the more you are up against the wall the more tendency there is to be protesting.
But formally I was very interested in creating kind of a very environmental, cultural experience where the audience were literally divided between the two narratives and they have to just keep looking and just take sides.
Ann: I want to ask you to talk a little bit more about this idea of what kind of art or what kind of work can come out of feeling so constrained or maybe feeling like the world is actively preventing you from expressing yourself. I wonder if you've thought about how which freedoms you feel and don't feel have affected the kind of art you've been able to make.
Shirin: Well one thing I have to say is you know I've always given myself a lot of boundaries in terms of the work that I make. Just subconsciously don't know if it's because I'm Iranian. I don't like infinity. I like limitations. And that means for example if you look at my aesthetics they're very minimal. They often use the idea of repetition. You know, I use the feet, the eye, the face, the hand. You know, the body language. I never expose like the breast or the stomach, you know? Or in my narratives they're very carefully calculated that they're not critical directly about anyone or any institution or thought.
So I feel like first I give myself a boundary in terms of what I would like to do and what I would not do and then within the boundary I want the freedom, you know? And I think that's the way I function. And to be very honest there's no doubt that this has to have something with the fact that I'm born Iranian and we have had years of censorship and dictatorship, lack of freedom of expression, and we always have to learn how to be subversive within a very hidden language using allegory and metaphors.
And so I'm really a product of a culture that has sort of this censorship has gotten deeply ingrained in their mindset where they can't just differentiate whether it's the society that is censoring or yourself. And I think those boundaries that are given, the fact that I don't want to insult anyone, it's because of where I come from. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question. But I really do need always to start with a form of boundary.
(12:00)
Ann: It's interesting hearing you say something about critiquing specific institutions because I was reading an interview with you recently where you said that the most recent work that's in this exhibition is perhaps the most overt in dealing with the social and political realities in the United States right now. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, why that might be the case.
Aminatou: Yeah. For the longest time even though I've lived here now longer than in my own country, so I very much feel like Iranian-American, I feel like I wasn't able to even imagine making work that sort of critiques the society. It was always me standing in exile looking back at the Middle East in Iran. And then lately, obviously after the Trump administration came into power and all of that wrong, I really felt like an immigrant. For the first time this notion of being a foreigner and the whole configuration of this country as this democratic society being at risk affected me really deeply. And I thought okay, I do feel now that it's time for me. I've gained a license to make work that somehow sort of gives my perspective of what I feel about the state of affairs in this country.
And so but knowing that I'm a person of poetry and surrealism, magic realism, I came up with a narrative that critiques as like a form of political satire. An Iranian immigrant woman going to interview people door-to-door at their homes in New Mexico asking to take their portrait and then trying to collect their dreams. And then taking those dreams back to a hidden Iranian colony which is on exhibit at The Broad where a bunch of Iranian people are secretly analyzing American people's dreams at a place that looks like they're creating atomic bombs in uniforms and all of that. They're going through American people's photographs and dreams.
(14:14)
I thought that was a perfect way of talking about the absurdity of this tension that had been going on for years and years between these two countries and how both administrations on the Iranian side and the American side, they're using the other as a form of enemy to sort of rally support for themselves in a way by the Iranians -- the Islamic Republic of Iran saying Americans are the enemy, you know, they get more support among the Iranians and the Trump administration saying we're the Axis of Evil trying to create this horrible picture of us as trying to destroy the world, the planet. Then they get Americans to hate us.
And so by them spying on their dreams, as if there's something about the dreams that is going to tell you something about the malice of the nation, I find that very provocative. And then the last thing I want to say is this woman who is the spy, at the end as she interviews Americans, begins to emotionally identify with these people and sees in fact that their dreams and nightmares are actually not that different from hers. So it's really about the humanity in all of us and how in one way or another we are all victims and subject to political injustice.
Ann: In a different interview you made a comment about how it took a long time for you to take yourself seriously and I was hoping you could talk a little bit about your timeline as an artist and maybe a little bit about what you meant by that.
(15:45)
Shirin: Yeah, actually it's an interesting question because I -- for some odd reason I grew up as a child thinking I want to be an artist, and no reason for that because there was no one in my remote family artistically inclined. But I had this romanticism about art -- a lot of people do I think even when they go to school -- then I came to the U.S. and I went to U.C. Berkeley and quickly I've discovered that I'm a terrible artist and I really have absolutely nothing to say. And in fact at the school I really was at the bottom of the list of the students. In fact also during that time was the revolution in Iran and the war with Iraq and all of the antagonism between the U.S. and Iran so I couldn't even focus.
So I lost interest in art and when I graduated which was about 1982/1983 I didn't touch art for eleven years. And then when I went back to it was after I visited Iran and I felt very compelled about certain issues but also during this time that I'd taken absent from art I had been able to develop some kind of a maturity and sort of visual vocabulary. So everything came together when I felt mature and I found the subject that I was passionate about. And then from that point on there was no way of stopping it and things had their own evolution.
Ann: And what about those ten years in-between before you felt those things click into place?
Shirin: Well I tried to survive because at this point my financial support was cut by family and then I met my ex-husband who had founded this wonderful not-for-profit organization called The Storefront for Art and Architecture and I became the co-director and for the next ten years I worked there helping other artists' vision come through making exhibitions, books, and conferences. And actually it was the greatest exercise in just sort of being selfless and not having an ambition of any kind and just trying to support others. And then eventually I left.
[Ads]
(21:00)
Ann: So last year Gina and I saw you speak after a screening of your feature film Looking for Oum Kulthum and I recall the story that you told about how you lost I believe the lead actor on the film maybe the day before it was supposed to begin shooting? It occurs to me that you must've faced several big obstacles like this, particularly when pursuing some of your most ambitious, largest-scale works.
Shirin: Yeah.
Ann: And I'm wondering if another time comes to mind when you thought that a project you'd really spent a lot of time and effort on could possibly fall apart.
Shirin: Exactly the same thing happened when I was making Women Without Men and part of the problem is that I was being not so smart recruiting actors who live in Iran and knowing the problematics of my political reputation in Iran and that at this point the government doesn't like to see any of them to come and work with me and that could cause them a problem in their future to return to Iran or future work in cinema.
(22:00)
But all of them at the beginning told me they're not worried and so actually I had another actress, a lead actress for the previous film, exactly the same thing happened. In fact we had all her dresses made. So I was really stupid because I became a victim of artists who fantasized about working with me and then at the end -- at the end they just didn't show up and then sort of came up with excuses and lies that oh, the government didn't let them. They were at the airport. It proved not to be true. So they had their doubts and they suddenly got a panic attack.
You know, I have to say it was a backlash and setback for us because then getting an actress who doesn't know the material, it's very difficult and I think the film hurt, especially with the second film. You know, I have to admit it was really not a good thing. But you know there's certain things that you cannot control and now these days I know for sure I would never, ever work with anyone that lives in Iran.
Ann: Just because of these experiences?
Shirin: Because it makes it impossible for people, because of my reputation, because of the issues that I have, the controversy about my work, it's not good for them. They could get in trouble.
Ann: And you take that into consideration when you think about working with them?
Shirin: Absolutely. I mean a lot of people in my studio even work with me. They don't like to have their picture taken with me because they don't want to eventually be seen that they're part of my community. I mean it's a very, very odd thing but, you know, in Iran the situation has made it where even if you have committed no crime you could be a criminal. And it's like it doesn't make any sense at all but unfortunately we're living under a dictatorship and very few countries are like that where the government even would care about who is making a film or not and an actress coming to work on a film about Oum Kulthum. I mean that's ridiculous. But I think it's mostly the actors themselves that had anxiety about maybe something would go wrong and then they backed out.
(24:30)
Ann: Speaking of your reputation I know that people around the world are very familiar with your art but thinking about a large exhibition like the one here there's certainly people who are going to encounter your work for the first time in this setting where they can kind of see the whole -- maybe not the whole timeline but much of it. And I'm wondering how you made selections about what you wanted to include or emphasize based on that.
Shirin: Well that goes to the credit of the curator. I'd chat. I mean we had a long conversation. We knew this was going to be a monographic exhibition so it would be a beginning, middle, and the end. I hope it's not the end. And also we made a decision -- I highly encouraged that I'd make a new work which would be premiered here which they really thought it was a good idea.
And I like it because it really feels like a circle that starts with me in the United States looking out towards Iran and critiquing it and ends with me standing here looking into the American kind of culture and critiquing it. And in the middle of the show slowly I let go of the Iranian narratives and I embrace other cultures like Egypt [0:25:40], you know, and Morocco, then eventually comes to America. So there's this kind of absence of nostalgia and just this obsession with home, you know?
(25:52)
And I think in many ways it's a little bit about my personal journey, like when I got exhausted of not being able to go back to Iran I said fuck it, I'm just not going to go on forever feeling sorry for myself and work on memory or something like that. And felt liberated by that decision then the world became my canvas.
Ann: I recall also reading you say something about how the governments of Iran and the United States have never had so much in common -- I'm paraphrasing -- but I'm wondering if that's also playing into your shifting perspective on what it means to live here.
Shirin: Yes. I never, ever imagined I would say something like that because I think one of the things I cherished about being in this country is democracy and it's the land of immigrants, land of dreams. And for that to sort of be compromised and transformed potentially into a very racist and white society and purifying itself of immigrants which in essence is a contradiction to the very formation of this culture, and also I felt that it became an ideological government where it never was like that, I feel like comes with Trump a whole ideology that I find very problematic, extremely dangerous. And it's the same I felt about the Iranian government, that this is a very ideological government that is fanatic. It's religious and religion and state blend together which is absolutely wrong. And it's a dictatorship and they have controlled every aspect of people's lives in the private and public domain.
(27:45)
And soon you'll probably have to watch that in this country where you have to be censored and certain things become a problem. And I just really feel like at the rate that we're going, the changes that are happening, it's frightening. And the most important is the treatment of immigrants, the lack of human rights issues. I mean Mexicans crossing the border, what we are seeing in those camps, it is just not the America that I know of. So it's very disturbing and I feel like as those who are born in this country have to be worried us as immigrants who have been naturalized citizens also have to worry. We all have to protect what is the greatest thing about this country, you know? Its democracy. And this is why it doesn't exist anywhere else, you know? And so I feel that is one of the reasons I want to create more work that sort of communicates both the good and bad values in this country you know? Because I see they coexist. Because I love this country, you know? And I care about it.
Ann: So you think there is a real role for the artist in preventing the worst that could happen?
Shirin: Well look, I feel that -- I don't want to overstate it -- I feel like the artists have a major role in terms of inspiring people, mobilizing people. You know, making people think, re-think about issues without being didactic, without being polemic, without saying what is right and what is wrong. And that is exactly what's difficult to make political artwork that is not biased. And in The Land of Dreams that's exactly what I tried to do is to show the vulnerability of the people and how we are all under the same degree of tyranny and corruption and that we're very vulnerable on this planet. But I didn't want to point out exactly who is the evil and who is the . . . And I think that to make work that sort of reflects on the political situation without being propaganda is extremely delicate and difficult but it's important.
(30:05)
Ann: Are there rules you have for yourself and how to walk that line? Or how do you know you are staying on the side of more lyrical interpretation or inspiration rather than propaganda?
Shirin: The way I do it is I make very personal work. I don't make just -- I don't just choose a subject and say oh, that's a hard political subject, I'm going to make a work about it. I make work that relates directly to my own personal life that I have felt the pain. You know, you can't fake pain. You can't fake the anxiety of being an immigrant for example or political injustice or anxiety of different kinds. So I think what my methodology is is make the work as personal as possible but not autobiographical because that doesn't interest me. And when you're personal people believe you because there's a lot of transparency, there's a lot of emotion, and I think that's my approach. I don't know how other artists do it.
Ann: Well now I have a biographical question for you. [Laughs] A theme that comes up in a lot of your work is being separated from your family or the sense of separation. I'm curious about the people who are maybe more physically close to you or geographically close to you who fill that support role of family now at this point in your life.
Shirin: Maybe you don't know but I work with a tribe of people.
Ann: [Laughs]
Shirin: I'm very tribal. I have created, ever since Turbulent, my first video where I met my future husband and the community that made that film, we are in my studio a group of like 15 people or more where we literally work together day-after-day on both photographic work and film-based work, mostly Iranian. And we are just like a big family and we deeply care for each other. We're extremely close but also artistically very close.
(32:05)
And at this moment as I speak to you I'm in L.A. We rented an Airbnb. There are eight of us staying in the same house and then there are 20 of us going to my brother's home. So we are just like very blessed by this idea of creating a sense of home and family on the outside of our own country. But I think what really connects us is not just being Iranian but is art.
Ann: Right, a deeper value.
Shirin: And deeper art that it doesn't just resonate among Iranian people but also the westerners, the Americans. And that's very important to me because again I really do consider myself half-American, half-Iranian, you know? I don't consider myself pure Iranian and the people who work with me understand that. Some of them are far more Iranian than I am but we do have this understanding that our audience are very international and very diverse.
Ann: I think we should just maybe leave it there. Am I missing any questions?
Gina: Well I think we have to ask about favorite snack.
Ann: Oh, we have a silly sort of question we ask most of our guests which is what is your favorite snack?
Shirin: Oh my god, I'm so embarrassed to admit my favorite snacks because they're so banal but usually people could say exotic things. I like corn chips and I like cookies. I like all the bad things. And apples, I like apples. Is that what you meant, in terms of food?
Ann: Sure, yeah.
Shirin: Yeah, yeah. I usually -- I eat breakfast. The rest of the day I just snack.
Ann: I love it. And I have one more little question that's maybe a little more serious.
Shirin: Yeah?
Ann: What is the last work of art, movie, book, painting that really moved you that you couldn't stop thinking about?
(33:55)
Shirin: There are so many things. I have to say very often more are films that move me than art although it has happened quite a lot recently. One of the films I love the most is Roma, you know? It's a film that was a year ago but I thought it was a beautifully balanced film visually, narratively. It was simple, minimal, and I loved it. I love -- I know it was very commercially successful but it really touched me. It was absolutely beautifully shot and that's kind of my idea of films that are meaningful and yet are very beautiful, you know? And the craftsmanship. It sort of defines my vision as an artist.
I have also been a great admirer of certain artists, like I'm not a painter but recently I came across an exhibition of Marlene Dumas who is a painter and it was just like a knife into my stomach. I was just blown away by its, you know, primal impact. So I like works that are very emotional.
Ann: Right. And I feel like that goes back to what you were saying about perhaps personal but not necessarily biographical.
Shirin: Exactly. You cannot identify why it moved you. You know, like sometimes you're just listening to music and that music takes you somewhere else. It transplants you and you say that is just amazing that that music just changed me completely moment-to-moment. And you say wow, art really can do that to you. Thank god. It's like a spiritual experience. And that is something I look for. I look to be moved.
Ann: Thank you.
Shirin: Thank you so much for these very smart questions.
Ann: Oh, thank you. [Laughs]
[Interview Ends]
Aminatou: Ugh, we love a visual artist. So good.
Ann: We do. And the real challenge of having a visual artist on a podcast is there's a lot of -- you do have to spend some time maybe talking about what the work looks like in order to contextualize for people who might not be familiar with why it's so amazing. So thanks for your patience with my probably clunky descriptions of different things she's got going on. And I don't know, come visit me in L.A. and we'll go.
Aminatou: Can't wait.
Ann: All right, I'll see you on the Internet.
Aminatou: I'll see you at the museum. Bye!
Ann: Bye.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf where Sophie Carter-Kahn does all of our social. Our associate producer is Jordan Baley and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.