Rebellious Silence. Shirin Neshat.
Women of Allah series. 1994. B&W RC print & ink. Photograph by Cynthia Preston.
Artist Statement
In 1993-97, I produced my first body of work, a series of stark black-and-white photographs entitled Women of Allah, conceptual narratives on the subject of female warriors during the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979. On each photograph, I inscribed calligraphic Farsi text on the female body (eyes, face, hands, feet, and chest); the text is poetry by contemporary Iranian women poets who had written on the subject of martyrdom and the role of women in the Revolution. As the artist, I took on the role of performer, posing for the photographs. These photographs became iconic portraits of willfully armed Muslim women. Yet every image, every women’s submissive gaze, suggests a far more complex and paradoxical reality behind the surface.
SOURCES
KhanAcademy.
http://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/global-culture/identity-body/identity-body-europe/a/neshat-rebellious
Formal and critical analysis of Rebellious Silence.
“Shirin Neshat: The Word as Weapon.” Interartiv.
http://interartive.org/2014/02/shirin-neshat/
Many comparative pieces beyond Rebellious Silence.
“Women of Allah: A Conversation with Shirin Neshat.” http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0038.207
In-depth interview with Neshat from the Michigan Quarterly Review.
TEDTalk: Art in Exile.
http://www.ted.com/talks/shirin_neshat_art_in_exile
NPR. “Artist Shirin Neshat Captures Iran's Sharp Contrasts In Black And White.”
http://www.npr.org/2015/05/18/407671343/artist-shirin-neshat-captures-irans-sharp-contrasts-in-black-and-white
“Veils, Poems, Guns, and Martyrs: Four Themes of Muslim Women’s Experiences in Shirin Neshat’s Photographic Work.”
http://journals.sfu.ca/thirdspace/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/cichocki/161
“Allegiance with Wakefulness.” Tahereh Saffarzadeh. 1980.
O, you martyr
hold my hands
with your hands
cut from earthly means, Hold my hands,
I am your poet,
with an inflicted body,
I’ve come to be with you
and on the promised day,
we shall rise again.
O Guard in the heart of night’s cold
you watch as if from outside
the house of your own body
with tired eyelids
a night nurse
so that the wounded city can rest
from the plunder of death.
Your wakefulness comes from earnest faith, your sincerity and Al-Asr.
Stories of your martyrdom
like martyrdom of the people
remain unheard
they have no voice, no image, no date,
they are unannounced.
O light of the eyes
O good
O my brother
O watchful one
as your bullets in the air
break my sleep,
as if by reflex, I pray for you,
guardian of the liberating Revolution
O lonely hero,
watching against the nightly enemy
let God safeguard you from calamity.
Farzaneh Milani. Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers.
“Thus, in her later poetry, not only is the poet Saffarzadeh veiled but so, too, is her poetic persona. If earlier the self was at the center of the perceived world, it has now moved to the periphery. If earlier she portrayed herself from within, in the privacy of her innermost feelings, she now presents herself from without, a submerged collective self. Self-effacement emerges. Her self is masked, veiled, as it were. […]
The poet no longer needs to distinguish herself from the whole. Now she wants to remain within the confines of her cultural context. […] Freed from an independence that both limited her and gave her individuality, she finds comfort and refuge in her revolutionary zeal. The adventurous Saffarzadeh need no longer reassess; standing inside the system she is no longer the outsider struggling for her right.”
From the Qur’an
“Wives of the Prophet, you are not like other women. If you fear God, do not be too complaisant in your speech, lest the lecherous-hearted should lust after you. Show discretion in what you say. Stay in your homes and do not display your finery as women used to in the days of ignorance.” Quran 33:32-3
"Read! Your Lord is the Most Bounteous, Who has taught the use of the pen, taught man what he did not know."Qur'an 96:3-5
Metropolitan Museum of Art Online
“Calligraphy is the most highly regarded and most fundamental element of
Islamic art. It is significant that theQur’an, the book of God's revelations to theProphet Muhammad, was transmitted in Arabic, and that inherent within the Arabic script is the potential for developing a variety of ornamental forms. The employment ofcalligraphy as ornamenthad a definite aesthetic appeal but often also included an underlyingtalismanic component. While most works of art had legible inscriptions, not all Muslims would have been able to read them. One should always keep in mind, however, that calligraphy is principally a means to transmit a text, albeit in a decorative form.
[…]
The Islamic resistance to the representation of living beings ultimately stems from the belief that the creation of living forms is unique to God, and it is for this reason that the role of images and image makers has been controversial. The strongest statements on the subject of figural depiction are made in the Hadith (Traditions of the Prophet), where painters are challenged to "breathe life" into their creations and threatened with punishment on the Day of Judgment. TheQur’anis less specific but condemns idolatry and uses the Arabic termmusawwir ("maker of forms," or artist) as an epithet for God. Partially as a result of this religious sentiment, figures in painting were often stylized and, in some cases, the destruction of figurative artworks occurred.Iconoclasm was previously known in theByzantine periodand aniconicism was a feature of the Judaic world, thus placing the Islamic objection to figurative representations within a larger context. As ornament, however, figures were largely devoid of any larger significance and perhaps therefore posed less challenge.”