Shirin Neshat’s Visual Narratives as Monumental Space of Truth and Memory: A Select Study

Abstract

The Iranian visual artist, Shirin Neshat, through her visual arts of photography, video installations and movies seem to present the cultural transformation of her native land triggered by the Islamic revolution of 1979 which drastically changed the social, political and cultural realms of the land. The change became visually evident in the compulsory dress code for women who were forced to wear ‘chador’, a traditional Iranian loose black cloak like garment and veil in public space. The present paper is an attempt to study the three photographs included in the series, ‘The Women of Allah’ as revealing the monumental space within Iran that in turn exposes the ambiguous and ambivalent representations of the land and its people in the cultural context.  ‘Monumental space’ as envisaged by Henry Lefebvre in The Production of Space includes the notions of collective memory, power and permanence. This spatial concept when used to analyze the condition of post revolutionary Iran as revealed in these photographs in the series, may throw light on the selective representations and deliberate omissions leading to a tilted view of the past through history. It may help to analyze the alienation of the artist from her native land as enabling her to step back and understand the versions of truth represented by certain memories.   The portraits themselves may be revealed as the monumental space of untold saga of resistance and defiance against a set of narratives that project stereotypical images weaving their own versions of truth.