Written by Anna Currence O'Neal
November 21, 2015
Social Realism is an art movement that has carried on in many contemporary artist’s works; one example, the example I will be focusing on in this writing, is Shirin Neshat. The Social Realism movement “flourished in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a time of global economic depression, heightened racial conflict, the rise of fascist regimes internationally, and great optimism after both the Mexican and Russian revolutions.” (The Art Story) The Social Realists depicted the “masses” in figurative and realistic images. The “masses,” in this sense, refers to the lower and working classes, labor unionists, and the politically disenfranchised. “American artists became dissatisfied with the French avant-garde and their own isolation from greater society, which led them to search for a new vocabulary and a new social importance; they found their purpose in the belief that art was a weapon that could fight the capitalist exploitation of workers and stem the advance of international fascism.” (The Art Story)
Shirin Neshat is an Iranian artist known for her photography and filmmaking. She was born on March 26, 1957, the fourth of five children, and was raised in the religious town Qazvin, in north-western Iran. Her family was wealthy, which allowed her parents to expose all of their children to the benefits of education. A quote from Neshat states, “My father was a doctor, but he was what I would call an intellectual - very well-read and very interested in knowledge. He insisted that I get as much education as my brothers.” Without this influence and insistence from her father, it is unlikely that she would have gained western education at all, particularly if she had stayed in Iran rather than traveling to the United States to attend university.
Her father romanticized the West and slowly, according to Neshat, “exchanged their identity for comfort.” Neshat’s parents were very accepting of Western ideologies, and through this acceptance, taught to her and her siblings, grew her own of a form of Western Feminism. Her father encouraged each of his daughters to be an individual, to take risks, to learn, and to see the world. In my opinion, this is one of the greatest pieces of guidance one can teach the next generation. Shirin Neshat learned this lesson at an early and influential age, which most certainly affected how she chose and continues to choose to live her adult life and the types of subject matter she places in her work.
Neshat left Iran to further her education right around the time the Islamic Revolution began in 1979. Her higher education took place at the University of California located in Berkeley, California and she achieved her BA, MA, and MFA during her time there. A common theme that runs through her work is the immense changes that took place in post-revolution Iran during her 12 year absence and the impact those changes had and have on the Iranian people.
In pre-revolution Iran, there was severe socio-economic division. Because of this, women and men joined together to overthrow the old-regime and attempt to build a better country. “Although both nationalists and Marxists joined with Islamic traditionalists to overthrow the Shah, revolution resulted in an Islamic Republic.” Those who opposed the Islamic Republic were executed or forced into exile after the Shah was removed from power. Women participated in this revolution as Iranians, without thinking that their social status would be altered. Women wore their chadors as a symbol of the revolution; they were regarded as a representation of the wearer’s reaction to imperialism in Iran.
Post-revolution, these women’s rights were quickly taken away from them and their ‘duty of maternity’ was greatly emphasized in law and culture. Now, written into law, these women suffer gender discrimination. This discrimination occurs across the board, from education and profession to marital rights and choice of clothing. Also post-revolution, Iranian criminal law is based on retaliatory punishments; such as the testimonies of two women being equal to that of a single man, if a woman is caught in adultery and killed by her husband he shall not be punished for the murder, if both men and women are caught in adultery the punishment is stoning (women are buried up to their neck, men to the waist), and any family planning programs were put out of commission. Iranian women can work but it cannot hinder their domestic duties. Their primary duty is to parent their children and serve their husbands.
Shirin Neshat faces many challenges “as an Iranian artist, as an Iranian woman artist, as an Iranian woman artist living in exile.” In her TedTalk, Art in Exile, she states, “Every Iranian artist, in one form or another, is political. Politics have defined our lives. If you're living in Iran, you're facing censorship, harassment, arrest, torture -- at times, execution. If you're living outside like me, you're faced with life in exile -- the pain of the longing and the separation from your loved ones and your family. Therefore, we don't find the moral, emotional, psychological and political space to distance ourselves from the reality of social responsibility.” She goes on to speak about the simultaneous battles she and those like her face in criticizing the Western perceptions of Iranians and Iranian women and at the same time criticizing the Iranian government that has committed numerous and varied crimes in order to stay in power. “Our artists are at risk. We are in a position of danger. We pose a threat to the order of the government. But ironically, this situation has empowered all of us, because we are considered, as artists, central to the cultural, political, social discourse in Iran. We are there to inspire, to provoke, to mobilize, to bring hope to our people. I envy sometimes the artists of the West for their freedom of expression. For the fact that they can distance themselves from the question of politics. From the fact that they are only serving one audience, mainly the Western culture. But also, I worry about the West, because often in this country, in this Western world that we have, culture risks being a form of entertainment. Our people depend on our artists, and culture is beyond communication.” (Art in Exile)
Shirin Neshat opens western eyes to the real women of Iran. She does this masterfully in her series “Women of Allah” originally published in 1997. In this series, she “examines the complexities of women’s identities in the midst of a changing cultural landscape in the Middle East - both through the lens of Western representations of Muslim women, and through the more intimate subject of personal and religious conviction.” (Khan Academy) One of her most iconic images from “Women of Allah” is “Rebellious Silence” (featured below). This image is stark with the contrast of her black chador against the very light gray background. The figure is bisected by the barrel of a rifle, adding a commentary of violence and current troubles in middle eastern countries. “A single subject, it suggests, might be host to internal contradictions alongside binaries such as tradition and modernity, East and West, beauty and violence. In the artist’s own words, “every image, every woman’s submissive gaze, suggests a far more complex and paradoxical reality behind the surface.” (Khan Academy)
Another work of Shirin Neshat’s that follows the theme of Social Realism is her film “Women Without Men”. This film was inspired by a novel written by an Iranian woman named Shahrnush Parsipur. The book tells the story of the interwoven destinies of five Iranian women who come to live together in a garden on the outskirts of Tehran, “escaping the narrow confines of family and society, and imagines their future living in a world without men.” (Women Without Men) Because of this book, Shahrnush Parsipur was imprisoned for five years and the book was banned in Iran. Neshat’s film based and named after this novel was released in the summer of 2009, ironically at the same time as the Green Movement, an uprising in Tehran that mirrored the 1953 uprising depicted in the film. The Green movement inspired Iranians, inside and outside of its borders. One thing the Green Movement achieved, was calling attention to the Iranians who stand for basic human rights and struggle for their country’s return to democracy. Something about the Green Movement that Neshat greatly identified with was the presence of the women in the uprising. “Women who were educated, forward thinking, non-traditional, sexually open, fearless and seriously feminist.” (Art in Exile) In Shirin Neshat’s words, “I made this film because I felt it's important for it to speak to the Westerners about our history as a country. That all of you seem to remember Iran after the Islamic Revolution. That Iran was once a secular society, and we had democracy, and this democracy was stolen from us by the American government, by the British government. This film also speaks to the Iranian people in asking them to return to their history and look at themselves before they were so Islamicized -- in the way we looked, in the way we played music, in the way we had intellectual life. And most of all, in the way that we fought for democracy.”
In the past three decades, the people, and certainly the women, of Iran have been stripped of their rights to some of the most basic freedoms. Just as the Social Realists of the 1920s and 30s reported on the living conditions of the people of their time, so is Shirin Neshat reporting on the oppression of people occurring in her time and in her country. There was a time in none too distant history when Iran was a secular-based democracy; when discrimination and cruelty were not written into the country’s laws. Social Realists report on and try to open their viewer’s eyes to things they do not see or come into contact with, things the viewers may or may not have preconceptions of. Neshat embodies this movement in that she attempts to share another side of Iran and its people, a side rarely seen or recognized by Western eyes. She is sharing the story of a country fighting for basic human rights, a country that has been incredibly altered by foreign and domestic intervention, and a country that, despite all that stands against it, continues to fight the oppression of their government.
“We are the reporters of our people, and are communicators to the outside world. Art is our weapon. Culture is a form of resistance.” (Art in Exile)
Works Cited
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