Fury
An Imaginary Conversation with Artist Shirin Neshat
Sometimes a small art magazine like ours has big dreams and ambitions. So after we saw the newest exhibition by the Irani American artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat at the Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm, we reached out to the museum to request an interview with the artists. After a few days, unsurprisingly, we received information that the artist isn’t taking any interviews at the time. The museum’s PR department sent us instead the press release and beautiful photos from the exhibition. As we don’t do reviews, for a second, we thought that the material gained will go to waste. But then it dawned on us, a realization or remembrance what Tarantula: Authors And Art is about … to encourage the readers to have their own conversation with the artists and their art works and in return to be inspired to create. So our writer and editor Maja Milanovic decided exactly that, to have her own conversation with Neshat. So here it is a chat, a letter or just a good time spent with some very impressionable art.
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Dear Ms. Neshat,
Congratulations on your latest show “Fury.” It reminded me of how much I admire your work and how your art left a deep impression on me when I was younger and saw your films Rupture and Fervor at the Guggenheim in New York. I may not have recalled your name until now, but the images of women clad in black from head to toe crossing the desert, as well as the image of a woman in the middle of prayer, in the woman's area, lifting her head for a second from the crowd of again veiled women... We recognize her for who she is and sense her yearning for her love, who is on the other side of the prayer wall, surrounded by only men. That moment of feelings stuck in a body being controlled and dictated how to behave in the name of ‘national culture’ or ‘tradition’ I referred to my whole life …. Have you seen those women walking the desert, or being separated in prayer … that artist …. Irani American. Well, with your new exhibition, I made a point of remembering your name. And your work in the new exhibition “Fury” will linger in my memory as well and I will find a way to bring it up when I talk about women and freedom.
This time, I met you in Stockholm, on the the second floor of the Fotografiska Museum, where you shared your voice with me through black and white prints of almost bare women of different shapes and features staring straight at us. What struck me first as I walked into the room was the difference in nakedness. The most Western looking of them was entirely naked, while the rest used other body parts or undergarments to shield themselves from your camera. She was also the skinniest of the bunch. Was she brave, vulnerable or self-deprecating? What makes a woman a woman? How does an imposed culture identify us? Can we just look at a woman without evaluating her and projecting all of our previous notions and prejudices onto her?
As I looked at these spectacular women from right to left and left to right, as they were placed in a straight order, I tried to put myself in their shoes and imagine how they had to overcome many of their own voices as they faced your camera. How much they had to pretend that they are doing alright and not care about the strangers that were about to visit the museum halls to stare at their bodies. Criticise. And they almost had us fooled, these fearless Amazons … , almost …. until one of them couldn’t take it anymore and the bottom lid of her eye started filling up with tears. She was holding onto them not to give into her pain, her generational trauma, expose her own bruises. Her lid was so heavy, I wished it would burst into a puddle and drag us all into it - all the mothers, grandmothers, daughters, women of all ages and give us permission not to hide our emotions and stories from one another. Instead, I wanted the women of the world to abandon their homes, careers, children, husbands, and brothers in order to create an ocean! Weave the wettest blanket of tears until their brothers, fathers and husbands stop what they are doing and realize that the wars, the invisible chains and rules, the RAPES, mutilations are forcing women to carry more than what they were destined for upon their birth. A wail. A scream. Just like in your short film which constitutes the second part of your show ‘Fury.” You said in one interview or the other that you want women to be angry. I agree but also wonder how can women come and fight together after being pitted against each other for a millennium.
Even though your film shines a light on female Iranian political prisoners, filming it in Brooklyn, New York was a brilliant idea. No country is 100% safe for our gender. You explained that you shot the film right before the Mahsa Amini demonstrations, as if you were anticipating what the year 2022 would bring to the country that exiled you. Or perhaps you were simply reliving memories from the past, present, and future as we, the women of the world, collectively neglected to come out and support yet again.
And now, at the end of the year, I'm feeling uncomfortable in my own skin once again. We have recently witnessed how quickly men become wild, how rape can be used to shake a nation, to fight for peace and liberation. I can't stop wondering how rape and body mutilation while being raped can be justified in the name of ideals. In the name of "us" vs "them." Men walked on the moon decades ago, but by watching the news at the end of 2023, civilisation is still making baby steps.
So it's no surprise that your show was the final big show of 2023. It will be on display at Fotografiska in Stockholm until February, and I hear that it will move to London at the beginning of next year. I'd like everyone to see it, to see how the notion of nonconforming sex being used as a weapon follows us wherever we go. You say that "Fury" focuses on the sexual exploitation of female political prisoners, yet we observe that even when these women move away from the center of torture, they are filled with such sadness. Is this really how we should treat the beings that give birth to the world?
So, as I wait for midnight to strike and usher us into the year 2024, I find myself practically speechless in the face of global events. I see all the traumas rising to the surface, traumas of pain, torment, feeling invisible, worthlessness, rejections, belonging to a minority, superiority, historical traumas... and everyone is simply surfing the wave and accusing one another of being on the wrong side of history. Perhaps. Perhaps everything has to come to the surface, and we have to witness all the anguish. Maybe only after we truly see each other we can reach out and begin the conversations, create art together, and create a new world order that is not the one that dictators and rulers are attempting to impose on us by encouraging us to hate and stand divided. Right now we are all losing. In this world women will never be safe.
Happy New Year!
A big thanks to Fotografiska in Stockholm for sharing Ms. Neshat’s photos with us.
SHIRIN NESHAT’S INSPIRATION
Shirin Neshat hand-inscribed calligraphy of poems by Iranian poet Forough Farrokhza on the bodies of her heroines, so we wanted to end this year with one of her poems.
To My Sister
Sister, rise up after your freedom,
why are you quiet?
rise up because henceforth
you have to imbibe the blood of tyrannical men.
Seek your rights, Sister,
from those who keep you weak,
from those whose myriad tricks and schemes
keep you seated in a corner of the house.
How long will you be the object of pleasure
In the harem of men's lust?
how long will you bow your proud head at his feet
like a benighted servant?
How long for the sake of a morsel of bread,
will you keep becoming an aged haji's temporary wife,
seeing second and third rival wives.
oppression and cruelty, my sister, for how long?
This angry moan of yours
must surly become a clamorous scream.
you must tear apart this heavy bond
so that your life might be free.
Rise up and uproot the roots of oppression.
give comfort to your bleeding heart.
for the sake of your freedom, strive
to change the law, rise up.