Shirin Neshat Quotes

In this Western world that we have, culture risks being [only] a form of entertainment.

Poets use metaphors and symbolism to construct images. I construct my images in the same way, except that I am using a different form.

Art is our weapon. Culture is a form of resistance.

Every Iranian artist, in one form or another, is political. Politics have defined our lives.

Being political is an integral part of being Iranian. Our lives are defined by politics.

The first years of my life in the U.S. were very difficult.

My father was a doctor, but he was what I would call an intellectual – very well-read and very interested in knowledge. He insisted that I get as much education as my brothers.

Beautiful woman wrapped in chadors, with huge machine guns in their hands. Brilliant, shocking, amazingly contradictory images. They compelled me to deeply investigate these ideas.

Every Iranian artist dreams of the black market. We don’t care about making money.

Nature has the most powerfully healing effect.

I think every one of us dreams, and we know what the quality of a dream is. In many ways, the reason dreams are so – mine are a little bit nightmarish, is that it’s when you’re really naked and can really face the things you don’t face in reality, your darkest anxieties.

I really am a strong believer that with editing, it should take a long time. Even you yourself are not capable of making the right decisions; sometimes you need a distance.

Magical realism allows an artist like myself to inject layers of meaning without being obvious. In American culture, where there is freedom of expression, this approach may seem forced, unnecessary and misunderstood. But this system of communication has become very Iranian.

There’s something when you’re always immersed in the natural landscape where it becomes your healer, in a way, at the same time that it also becomes sort of frightening. I guess that’s how I see things, in that form of duality.

My work has never been autobiographical. Although the subjects are driven on a personal perspective it’s sort of elevated above me. I try to express something that is more a collective expression of crisis.

I’m really interested in social justice, and if an artist has a certain power of being heard and voicing something important, it’s right to do it. It could still be done in such a way that it’s not aggressive or overly didactic. I’m trying to find that form.

Part of me has always resisted the Western clichГ©d image of Muslim women, depicting them as nothing more than silent victims. My art, without denying ‘repression,’ is a testimony to unspoken female power and the continuing protest in Islamic culture.

I find that through the study of women, you get to the heart – the truth – of the culture.

To me, editing is not something you can do in a rush because the artists themselves are not always their own best editors. Time is absolutely everything.

I believe we don’t need to widen the divide between the West and Islam. Rather, we need to build dialogue to encourage tolerance and respect.

Art is no crime. It’s every artist’s responsibility to make art that is meaningful

My mother is my last point of security in relation to my past, and if that breaks, I will not ever have that type of pure love or pure attachment.

There is nothing negative about a group of people crying out for democracy – and if my voice counts, I will be vocal.

I believe and support the feminist movement, but I am not generally interested in considering women’s rights in relation to equality with men, or in a competition with men, but rather within their own rights and feminine space.

Those of us living in the state of in between have certain advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of being exposed to a new culture and in my case the freedom that comes with living in the USA. The disadvantages of course being that you will never experience again being a center or quite home anywhere.

I’m an artist, I’m not an activist.