NOIRE

Shirin Neshat’s images are enhanced by the spirit and the emotional qualities she has found in contemporary Iranian women. Her images are a visualisation, both in photograph and in video, of the words: they are minimal, emotional, complex but concise. Like a writer she established her vocabulary: the veil, the body, the text, the firearms, and she continued to improvise within this framework. The application of the text over her photograph functions as a voice, a voice to question the stereotypically negative and victimising qualities associated with Islamic women.
The collaboration and friendship between Shirin Neshat and Noire Gallery has begun in 1996 with Shirin’s solo show Women of Allah, followed by the publication of her first monograph.
Later, Noire Gallery premiered the video Turbulent at ARCO in Madrid in 1998, and subsequently at Venice Biennale where she won the Golden Lion.