On the invitation of The Center for Human Rights, Neshat decided to show how personal experiences of being a woman in a traditionally confined society have affected the art made by some of the most inspiring Iranian women artists. This exhibition is rooted in Neshat’s agenda of mapping and presenting different artistic practices made by women regardless of the media (for instance, her last film is focused on the work and life of a famous Egyptian singer Oum Kulthum). To be more precise, her work is interwoven with issues of displacement and nostalgia explored via the perspective of well-articulated gender politics.

Throughout the years, Shirin Neshat has been fiercely producing socially and politically engaged works with an emphasis on women's questions. Image courtesy of Haines Gallery and the Center for Human Rights in Iran. Shiva Ahmadi - Carnage, acrylic and watercolour on Aquaboard, 2018. Under the title A Bridge Between You and Everything: An Exhibition of Iranian Women Artists tends to explore issues of identity, repression, storytelling, and memory. One of the most prolific Iranian women artists and a figure of an international acclaim is certainly Shirin Neshat, who was asked by a non-governmental organization The Center for Human Rights in Iran to curate a show dedicated to her female counterparts in New York City. Such a state of being reflected on women artists who reasonably started exploring their identity and their place in society. Life became more bearable for women only in the last fifteen to twenty years, meaning that there was a significant disruption in the process of social emancipation. Interestingly so, the revolution was not violent and a great number of women participated the feeling of a more egalitarian society was in the air, yet over time the society went backwards and the forced wearing of the hijab was legislated. In 1979, the famous Iranian revolution took place and the Pahlavi monarch family was overthrown and the replaced by the government of a newly formed Islamic republic under the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Shirin in shahrzad series