Be warned: Shirin Neshat’s exhibition at the Phi Center is not made up of easy works. You will see two hard, violent, disturbing creations… There are not enough words to express their full force. But who wants nice art? In fact, a lot of people. In our time when art is often considered as entertainment or decoration and / or investment for rich people, The Fury could detonate in the current cultural landscape and detonate in the minds of visitors. Nowadays, it would seem that the public should be warned that art can disturb. So be warned. But you should also know that this is an extremely intelligent work that contrasts with the ambient mediocrity found in the media – social or not – and even with the art in many galleries and museums.
Gripping reality?
Artist of Iranian origin, Shirin Neshat deals here with themes related to the issue of prisoners and especially political prisoners, to the violence suffered by these women who are tortured, sexually assaulted, raped… In a first section, in a video projected on two screens Facing each other, we will see a woman, played brilliantly by actress Sheila Vand, who is haunted in her life in Brooklyn by memories of violence suffered in a prison in another country. The subject, but also the device, puts the viewer in a disturbing situation. As Neshat points out, “the multi-screen video installations that I make place the viewer in a physical and emotional experience of discomfort, because they have to become like an editor in this film.” A situation where the spectator must be on the lookout, continually interpreting the different pieces of film that he sees.
This tension finds its climax here in a second section of the exhibition, presented in virtual reality. You will have the feeling that you yourself take the place of this imprisoned woman subjected to the abuses of her jailers.
But it is not for all that a simply and literally socially engaged work, a simple illustration of political issues. Neshat makes art.
“It is indeed an important distinction,” she says. People who are not used to my work may find it difficult to distinguish the artistic part from the political reality to which I refer. I’m comfortable with magical realism, surrealism and the world of dreams, because I want to make references to reality, but at the same time, I’m not just interested in reality…I like a idea travels, floats between the conscious and the unconscious. In this work, we find ourselves diving into the mind of this woman who cannot manage to free herself from the harsh reality she has lived through. »
Neshat is therefore very far from wanting to represent Iranian women as victims, a criticism that some people were able to make to her last January during the presentation of this video work at the Gladstone gallery in New York. “But there were also a lot of people who cried during the opening,” she adds.
Some also reproached him for appropriating and plundering works such as Night porter (1974), by filmmaker Liliana Cavani, or Salò or the 120 days of Sodom (1975), by Pier Paolo Pasolini… “But I’ve never seen this film by Pasolini, a filmmaker that I adore… How could I have stolen the idea for his film from him? But even if I had been inspired by artists or filmmakers, isn’t that a very normal thing in the arts world? »
Art censorship?
This work therefore appealed to many visitors. “However, I have not done a work as political as Women of Allah…”, a series of photos she created between 1993 and 1997.
But these negative reactions may be due to the fact that the world has changed… Could we still make and present films as disturbing as Night porter ? Nowadays, should we create sanitized works?
“As an artist from Iran, a country where there is no freedom of expression, where censorship reigns, I have nevertheless found disturbing questions in the West concerning the representation of nudity, or , just like here, about showing a partially naked woman surrounded by men wearing uniforms… With the history of the nude in the West in Michelangelo or Rodin, why is it difficult to show images of my work showing naked bodies? The conservatism that is spreading in the West sometimes touches on that of the Middle East. I never expected to find that in America. The vision of homosexuality represented by Pasolini or of the brutality exhibited in Porter by night of Cavani are nowadays difficult to show. Action films are the only ones that can still exhibit violence. But if a work of contemporary art or an auteur film shows war, violence, fanaticism or subjects such as refugees, then the reactions are very strong… When presenting The Fury last January, my gallery received threats! And so it may be difficult for a museum to acquire a piece like mine that talks about rape… Will a museum decide to at least show this work? Maybe it’s too risky. And now, institutions no longer want to take that kind of risk. »
But you, readers, grab this opportunity to see this moving work.