Women without Men was created between 2004 and 2008. It consists of five video installations: Mahdokht, Zarin, Munis, Faezeh and Farokh Legha, with altogether seven projections to be shown in five separately constructed spaces. The total duration of the films is c. 1:15 mins.
Neshat’s new work is based on a banned book from 1989 by the Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur. The novel is set in 1953, the year when the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, vainly tried to avert a coup d’état mounted by American and British forces, whose task it was to reinstate the Shah as an absolute ruler in order to avoid the nationalisation of the country’s oil resources.
In her films, Shirin Neshat retains the magic realism of the novel and allows magic and the supernatural to interact with the realistic story. On the other hand, she deals freely with the novel’s action as she focuses on mood and tone in her work rather than seeking to create a straightforward film version of the novel.
It is the five main female characters – Mahdokht, Zarin, Munis, Faezeh and Farokh Legha – that Shirin Neshat portrays in a gripping drama about power and powerlessness. The women confront the lives they have lived hitherto in different ways and seek to escape from the city to a garden, where they for a time find a refuge. For these women, life is a struggle for freedom and survival in a society that lays down strict rules regarding religion, sex and social behaviour.
Shirin Neshat was born in Iran in 1957 and had her artistic training in California during the 1970s and 1980s. On account of the Islamic revolution in her native country in 1979, she never moved back and now lives and works in New York.
ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum Web Site
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