Shirin Neshat: Two Installations

One of the most exciting and important young artists of the past decade, Iranian-born Shirin Neshat has addressed issues of nation, colonialism, and gender in a variety of media, always challenging our preconceptions about art and society. She is particularly renowned for her film installations, which have been featured at several Whitney Biennials–and this new catalogue accompanies Rapture and Fervor , the second and third films in a trilogy exploring the social, political and psychological dimensions of women’s experience in contemporary Islamic societies. The emphasis here is on the interplay between the explicit text and the implicit subtext in Islamic ritual, and how the emotions stirred up by these rituals can take on mercurial and contradictory forms.