Neshat Shirin

Shirin Neshat, born in 1957 in Qazvin (Iran), is an Iranian visual artist and filmmaker exiled in the United States since the Islamic Revolution. Trained at the University of California, Berkeley, she made a name for herself in the 1990s with her powerful photographs combining female bodies, Persian calligraphy and Islamic symbols. Her work explores the tensions between tradition and modernity, female identity, exile and political authority. Alternating between video, photography and cinema, she creates a committed and poetic body of work, marked by cultural duality. Winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2009, she is now one of the leading voices in international contemporary art.