Visions Of An Orthodox Beauty

By Belinda Luscombe

A huge black petunia blooms in the desert. Mist rises from its center. Its petals ripple. Wait, it's not a petunia; it's a circle of people. People in chadors, the head-to-toe black coverings of orthodox Muslim women. It's not mist; it's dust. They're on their knees, digging in the sand. The scene--from Passage, Shirin Neshat's newest video, a collaboration with composer Phillip Glass--is starkly beautiful, revealing itself slowly, as in a glass, darkly.

It's difficult to pin down exactly what makes the videos of Iranian-born Neshat so astonishing. Part of their freshness must be that they offer a view of a life few Westerners understand, in a way that emphasizes its beauty and passion rather than its oppression. But her work is not simple reportage. The people in her videos are vehicles for expressing universal human emotions: desire, love, grief, loneliness.

Neshat's videos gracefully negotiate between the Scylla of "Isn't this just television?" and the Charybdis of much early video art's stupefying dullness. She's not afraid of narrative, but it does not control the work. To watch Rapture, the viewer stands between two screens, one of men busying themselves with ladders in a fortress, the other of women pushing a boat out from a beach. The groups on the two screens interact. The meaning is open-ended.

Like many modern artists, Neshat incorporates other media in her work. Music and architecture (one of her works used the World Trade Center as a backdrop) are important in creating her films' poetic tone. But unlike many in her field, she does not scorn commercial moviemaking. "I try not to define for myself whether I'm an artist or a filmmaker," she says, citing Iranian cinema as one of her chief inspirations. "I think film is the most democratic art form."

It's also, in her hands, one of the most polygenetic, drawing from sources East and West, new and old. "I've never thought of my work as innovative," says Neshat, 44, "but I never followed any set of rules." Spoken like a woman of her times--and her culture.

--By Belinda Luscombe