An acclaimed artist working primarily in photography, film, and video, Shirin Neshat (Born 1957 in Qazvin, Iran) creates artwork that primarily contends with the experiences and struggles of Iranian women through the lens of religion, femininity, and modernity, prompting important questions about the representation of Muslim women in contemporary art. Born in northwestern Iran, Neshat moved to Los Angeles in 1974 to study art—just prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. She was not able to return to Iran and to her home and family until 1990, where she witnessed firsthand the effects of the Revolution on Iranian women and women’s rights. This trip had a significant impact on Neshat’s work and life through her continued exploration of social and political resistance, identity, displacement, and the relationships between women and religious and cultural value systems—topics and themes which have since seen her exiled from Iran.
The photograph Untitled is part of a series titled Passage (2001), depicting scenes from Neshat’s single-channel video Passage (2001). The video was shot on 35mm film in the seaside Moroccan city of Essaouira and in the Moroccan desert at a halfway point between Marrakesh and Casablanca and includes an accompanying score by the composer Philip Glass (who originally commissioned the video, Passage). The video is composed in three parts: the first follows a group of men carrying a body prepared for burial; the second, a group of women preparing a place for burial by digging into the ground with their hands; and the third, a young girl playing alone as the burial concludes with a funeral pyre. This photograph draws from the second part of the film, showing the women in a tight circle on their hands and knees, conflating the forms of their huddled bodies with the rocky, dry landscape. Likewise, their tightly gathered bodies resemble the form of the funeral pyre, layering nuanced meaning through visual metaphors on the role of gender, performance, and ritual.