When Shirin Neshat’s compelling series of photographs, “Unveiling” and “Women of Allah,” appeared in 1993 and 1994, critics reacted very favourably. Her more recent work continues to receive positive critiques, yet, the cultural stereotypes of the oppressed Muslim woman within which these critiques often operate detract from the actual complexity of her work. For example, Calvin Reid, critic for Art in America, writes about “Women of Allah”: “contradictions - seductive feminine beauty and religious circumspection, Western conceptual art practice and traditional Islamic craft [the calligraphy], not to mention ‘submissive’ Islamic women with large guns - provide an irresistible intellectual and visual frisson” (105). Laurie Attias writes in a review for Artnews that Neshat’s photographs act “as a potent metaphor for the harsh reality in which Muslim women are publicly censored and held captive in their traditional roles” (174). Further, Attias states: “Some of the most powerful works in the show were portraits of women with guns. Fierce symbols of hatred and fear, the guns represent both the overwhelming weight of the women’s imposed silence and the explosive force and vitality lying beneath that silence. Shocking as they initially appear, the photographs offer a sense of hope for change” (174). B. Schwabsky writes in Artforum: “Neshat communicates, at first, little beyond submission (the literal meaning of the word Islam), discipline and conviction. Yet her eyes express, at times, overwhelming vulnerability and intimacy” (88).

What all three of these critiques have in common is a rather reductionist and stereotypical view of Muslim women as beautiful, submissive, silent, and vulnerable, yet dangerous. The Muslim woman is victimized - the question is whether more by Orientalist and First-World feminist notions or by her own patriarchal society - but there is hope for rescue. However, the fact that Shirin Neshat elaborates on stereotypical images of Iranian women as disseminated by the Western media makes her vulnerable to the critique of perpetuating and validating such stereotypes and clichés rather than undermining them.[1] The complexity of the Neshat’s work only emerges when taking a closer look at those aspects of her work that are largely lost on her primarily Western audience.

The purpose of this paper, thus, is to combat reductionist and totalizing readings of Neshat’s images by providing a historical analysis of four major themes that occur again and again in her work: the veil, poetry, the gun, and the concept of martyrdom. By historicizing these elements and concepts that are central to Iranian culture - something that, to be fair, is hardly possible in the two to three columns that the reviewers usually have available - I hope to offer the tools necessary to do an informed and in-depth reading of Neshat’s “Unveiling” and “Women of Allah” and to make the reader aware of her work’s ambiguities. In order to avoid the notion of one, true interpretation, statements about the artist’s intentions are taken from interviews, or, where I suggest a possible reading, this will be indicated as being merely my way of seeing her work. Before delving into the discussion of the four major themes, a few biographical as well as general remarks about Shirin Neshat and her work shall serve as a background against which to view the “Unveiling” and “Women of Allah” series.

Born in the Iranian city of Qazvin in 1957, Neshat came to the United States in 1974 to study. She majored in Studio Arts at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her M.F.A. in 1982. From a distance, Neshat watched the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79, which overthrew the American-backed Pahlavi regime (1921-1979) with its forcefully modernizing and secularizing tendencies and re-instated an Islamic theocracy under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini. Until 1990, Neshat was unable to return and visit her home country. When she finally could, the experience became a catalyst for producing her first major artwork after a period of ten years, in which she had concentrated her energy on running a non-profit gallery in New York. In an interview with Sadi Sheybani, the artist comments on her experiences in Iran:

In 1993, Neshat exhibited the photographic series “Unveiling” (see I Am Its Secret, fig. 1) at the Franklin Furnace in New York, followed in 1996 by a series entitled “Women of Allah” (see Seeking Martyrdom #1, fig. 2) at the Annina Nosei Gallery, also in New York.[2] Both series consist of black-and-white photographs of women - mostly of the artist herself - conceptualized and staged by Neshat, but shot by a photographer. The text that is inscribed on either the body parts or the background is added later with ink. Neshat’s aesthetic choice of using black-and-white photography reflects “the dichotomies [she is] interested in exploring and highlights the juxtapositions of the ideas [she is] visualizing” (Sheybani 205). Furthermore, the choice is essential in giving clarity within the images’ complex setting (Sheybani 205). The inscription of pattern and text on the woman’s body is inspired by the tradition of tattooing in Middle Eastern culture, but also by the significance that poetry as a vehicle of expression has in Iranian culture (discussed in more detail below). In sum, these two photographic series, and also Neshat’s subsequent work, deal with the experience of being a woman in Islam, and specifically in Iran. In particular, “Unveiling” focuses on the woman’s body, whereas “Women of Allah” raises the issues of martyrdom, militancy and violence (see below).

In 1996, Neshat moved from still images to video installations, creating such works as Anchorage (1996), which combines the concepts of religion, violence and mysticism; Shadow Under the Web (1997), which deals with the notion of the female body in public space; Turbulent (1998), which reflects on Iran’s prohibition against women singing in public; Rapture (1999), which plays with the concept of gender segregation; and Soliloquy (1999), which juxtaposes Muslim women in a “traditional” and a “hypermodern” environment. Neshat still remains loyal to black-and-white film, and thus amplifies the dichotomies it suggests by usually situating two or more screens or video monitors opposite each other. This spatial arrangement points to Neshat’s preoccupation with binaries of gender - as can be seen in Turbulent and Rapture, where male protagonists are featured on one screen and female protagonists on the other - as well as the bi-cultural position she takes as an Iranian living in the United States.

This bi-cultural position can work both as an advantage - providing rich material to draw from - and as a disadvantage - the necessity to explain and the danger of the art being reduced to just that explanation. As Neshat acknowledges:

The Veil: Instrument of Oppression or Emblem of Liberation?

Few items of clothing have been as disputed and as charged with political meaning as the veil worn by Muslim women. It is a complex symbol: female emancipation can be denoted by either wearing it or removing it; the veil can acquire both secular and religious meaning in that it either denotes resistance to colonization, or ties with the Islamic tradition (El Guindi 172). Neshat makes extensive use of this ambivalence, and in order to understand the origin of these multiple meanings as well as that of the veil itself, I provide a short history of the veil here.

At the time of the rise of Islam in the seventh century, veiling had already been a practice indigent to many different cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, including Jewish and Christian. There is evidence of use of the veil and seclusion of women, in various degrees, in Assyrian Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Byzantine Empire, Sassanian Iran and pre-Islamic Arabia. The veil carried different meanings in each of these distinct cultures, attendant on the respective status of women within them: the veil could be a marker of high social rank; it could serve to differentiate respectable women under male protection from those who were available; or it could, for spiritual reasons, conceal from man’s view the woman’s body, which in Early Christian ethos came to be perceived as a shameful reminder of physicality and sexuality and a source for temptation.[3] Early Islamic society did not develop in a vacuum, but incorporated pre-Islamic mores and traditions, including ideas about women’s status and veiling, albeit in a very uneven way. Thus, even during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, when seclusion became slowly institutionalized, the meaning of the veil changed. In the beginning, Muhammad only enjoined his wives to take the veil. This he did, in Leila Ahmed’s interpretation, in order to create “a distance between his wives and this thronging community [of new converts] on their doorstep - the distance appropriate for the wives of the now powerful leader of a new, unambiguously patriarchal society” (55). How the practice of veiling and seclusion spread to the rest of the community we do not know, but it seems to have changed in meaning quickly from a social marker to a sign of modesty and an emblem of Muslim identity. The passage in the Qur’an, the Holy Book of Islam, which codified the new standard of dress appropriate for a Muslim woman, runs as follows:

Why is it that it is particularly women’s, but not men’s clothing that communicates Muslim identity? Fadwa El Guindi in her anthropological study of veiling offers an explanation: “women are the center of a family’s sacred identity, for they embody the central values prized by the family that are key to their reputation and their status” (88). From this perspective, it is understandable that a woman’s behaviour and body become the site not only of family identity, but also of the identity of entire nations. Therefore, veiling takes center stage in political discourse. In contradiction to what Western feminist discourse has made of it, veiling does not necessarily imply the notion of female inferiority and subordination.

The veil took on political dimensions for the first time in the nineteenth century, when European powers justified the colonial project by claiming to rescue Muslim women from the oppression of a savage faith, most readily visible in the practices of veiling and seclusion (Ahmed 149-152). The reaction to such a claim burdened the veil with symbolic value. In Leila Ahmed’s words,

Especially in the 1970s, an Islamic movement was coupled with anti-colonialist and nationalist sentiments as well as a rejection of all the evils that Westernization/modernization had brought with it (as symbolized by women’s adoption of revealing clothing), such as consumerism, materialism, commercialism, and deteriorating values. In Iran, the Islamic Movement reacted against the Pahlavi’s dictatorial oppression and the Western values that were first imposed under Shah Reza Pahlavi (1878-1945, reigned 1925-1941). In 1936, Shah Reza enacted a law that banned women from wearing a veil or a chador. As a consequence, soldiers on the street tore veils off women who resisted the ban; women wearing a chador were refused service in shops, hotels, restaurants, and public transportation; and women who had worn the veil all their life and could not bear the thought of exposing themselves to the male gaze sequestered themselves to their houses. The ban of the veil as well as the promotion of Western customs became increasingly perceived as destruction of indigenous Persian culture.

In addition, the Pahlavi regime promoted an image of the Westernized (and of course unveiled) woman that reduced her to a mindless decoration piece, as evidenced in a statement given by Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi during an interview with an Italian journalist:

Today, the ubiquitous nature of the veil in Iran is a visual marker of the Iranian Revolution’s success and Iranian national identity. While many women conceive of veiling as an oppressive practice, there is an equally large number who see the chador as enhancing their self-worth and demonstrating their spirituality. Shirin Neshat, who veils only when she returns to her native Iran, claims not to take position for or against the practice of veiling: “From the beginning I made a decision that this work [the series “Unveiling”] was not going to be about me or my opinions on the subject, and that my position was going to be no position. I then put myself at a place of only asking questions but never answering them” (Bertucci 84).

Indeed, Neshat seems to bring out contradictory notions of veiling in her work and thus covers a range of sentiments about the veil. In Untitled (Mother and Son) (1996, fig. 3), a woman who is covered by a chador in her entirety and thus reduced to a black motionless silhouette against a white background, holds the hand of a naked boy by her side, baring only an underarm the tense grip of which gives the impression of strength. The boy’s body is inscribed with graceful vegetal ornamentation, which only emphasizes his nakedness in contradiction to the woman’s covered body. As Neshat states,

In I Am Its Secret (1993, fig. 1), on the other hand, the veil appears far less oppressive. Rather, the chador encircling the woman’s forehead and drawn over her mouth emphasises the bare parts of the face and its expressiveness. The Persian poem by Forugh Farrokhzad that is inscribed in black and red over her skin in concentric circles (but spares the heavily made-up eyes gazing directly at the viewer), further stresses the expression of the face - it speaks poetic volumes. Neshat achieves this expressiveness by virtue of the juxtaposition of the visible and the invisible; by virtue of the concentration on the body part that carries most of human emotional expression, that is, the eyes; and by virtue of what is left to the imagination. In this sense, the veil becomes a framing device, or even more than that, it denotes sensuality and the fact that manyMuslims hold the “quite common cultural view of the concealment of the women’s body as enhancing feelings of sexuality” (El Guindi 52). Thus, whereas Neshat addresses the issue of oppression by means of the veil in Untitled (Mother and Son), I propose that I Am Its Secret can be read as a celebration of the expressiveness and sensuality that is brought out strongly - not despite, but exactly because of, the veil. The latter reading comes dangerously close to the Orientalist notion of the mysterious Middle Eastern woman behind the veil, an idea with which Neshat seems to flirt here.

As can be gathered from its history as well as the comparison between Untitled (Mother and Son) and I Am Its Secret, the veil can take on multifarious meanings in a Muslim woman’s experience, negative and positive. Another significant cultural element that carries meaning in Neshat’s images is Persian poetry. The next section familiarises the reader with the poetry used by Neshat and the implications it has for her work.

Persian Feminist Poetry: Women’s Voice or Veil?

In many of Neshat’s photographs, the pictured woman’s face, hands, or feet, are inscribed with poems. The critic B. Schwabsky equates these inscriptions with a veil covering the bare body parts: “the Farsi verses […] obscure the surfaces of many of the photographs, often further ‘veiling’ Neshat’s face, hands or feet. Though promising legibility, these signs are unintelligible to most Westerners and thus draw our attention to the areas that they cover while continuing to screen them from us” (88). This interpretation neglects the fact that the verses have been written by women and that literature does not usually serve to hide and conceal, but to communicate and to reveal. Farzaneh Milani, an authority on Iranian woman writers, remarks that the beginning of women’s literary tradition in Iran coincides with their attempt to unveil, and argues:

Similar to the complex and sometimes contradictory meanings of veiling, feminist Persian poetry is far from being a monolithic body: some women poets in their work clearly voice their individual resentment vis-à-vis a male-dominated Iranian society, while others use their poetry as mouthpiece for the masses and abstain from self-expression. Neshat consciously puts this diversity to use in her photographs: “Each time I inscribe a specific woman’s writings on the photographs, the work takes on a new direction” (Sheybani 207). Two different directions are visible in the “Unveiling” and the “Women of Allah” series: while the former is inscribed with poetry of Forugh Farrokhzad, the latter carries poems by Tahareh Saffarzade. The different positions that these two women writers occupy is evident from their biographies.

Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967) is one of the most important poets of twentieth-century Iran. Throughout her life, tragically cut short by an automobile accident, she challenged dominant Iranian value systems such as traditional ideals of femininity, rejected double standards, and lived according to her own social mores. Married at sixteen and a mother at seventeen, she divorced her husband at nineteen to dedicate her life to poetry, which became a chronicle of her own emotions, anxieties, and desires. The frank revelation of hitherto unspeakable subjects - the body, love, lust, and death - is what accounts for the radicalism of her work. With these subjects she “unveiled” not only her individual problems as a Westernized Iranian woman of the twentieth century, but also those of an entire generation. Her distinctive female voice has enriched Persian poetry and encouraged other women to compose lyric works, to the extent that the 1960s has been termed the “Decade of Poetesses” (Hillmann 138). However, the reception of her poetry has varied over the last decades. First belittled as a woman poet, her premature death caused readers to re-evaluate her poetry in extremely favourable terms. Under the rise of neo-traditionalism and then under Khomeini’s regime, Farrokhzad’s work was denounced for its immorality and its advocacy of promiscuity. Nevertheless, her poetry continues to be well-known, and Iranian viewers would very likely recognize her poems in Neshat’s photographs and be able to make the connection between the images and what Farrokhzad stands for.

It is not surprising that Neshat chose to feature in her “Unveiling” series a woman poet whose work revolved around “unveiling,” be it her inner world or the ills of a Westernized Iranian society. In Offered Eyes (1993, fig. 4), Neshat has inscribed the beginning of Farrokhzad’s I Feel Sorry For the Garden onto the white of an eye that fills almost the entire closely cropped picture. The inscribed part of the poem reads:

Tahereh Saffarzadeh (born 1959) is also a female poet who in her later work concerned herself with the problems arising from the Westernization of her home country, albeit in a very different way. Saffarzadeh’s earlier career as a poet parallels Farrokhzad’s somewhat in that she voiced the sentiments of a woman who tries to free herself from restrictive social codes. After getting a divorce, Saffarzadeh left Iran in 1963 to receive an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. Back in Iran, in the 1970s, Saffarzadeh became a devout Muslim. She became convinced that “faith is the only source of deliverance from the wasteland of contemporary Iran,” and started to infuse her poetry with religio-political fervour (Alishan 181). Instead of speaking up for women and their experience, Saffarzadeh now became a mouthpiece for revolutionary forces. The poetry collection Allegiance With Wakefulness (1980), written during and shortly after the Islamic Revolution, attacks Western values, presents Islam as the only viable solution to Iran’s ideological struggles, and praises Ayatollah Khomeini (Milani, “Revitalization” 138).

It is also from this poetry collection that Neshat takes the poems for her series “Women of Allah,” which deals with militant Muslim women. For Neshat, these women hold a particular fascination: “I took on the role of those women who fought in the revolution. […] Women who were so committed to their religion that they were able to sacrifice their freedom and material lives to promote something larger than themselves” (Camhi 150). Saffarzadeh’s later poetry reflects this emphasis on the collective public interest: whereas in her early poetry she speaks out as an individual woman, her later work exhibits “progressive self-effacement and adoption of a neuter poetic persona” (Milani, “Revitalization”136). Thus, it fits particularly with the notion of militant Muslim women that Neshat wants to communicate.

Allegiance With Wakefulness (1994, fig. 5) is also the title of Neshat’s photograph that features the most often cited poem from the book with the same title. The center of the image is occupied by a pair of bare feet, which belong to a chador-clad woman sitting on the ground, her body hardly visible in the background. Between the feet emerges the tip of a rifle’s barrel. It is not pointed at the viewer, but to the right, making it unclear what the woman is aiming at. The image’s poignancy lies in the stark contrast between the pointed rifle and the fragile beauty of the woman’s feet with little floral ornaments and calligraphy inscribed on them. Saffarzadeh’s poem reads:

Guns in the Hands of Muslim Women

In September 1985, the press agency Reuters distributed the following news item:

According to popular understanding, soon after the establishment of Islam in the mid-seventh century, the jihad, or Holy War (as a means of enlarging Muslim territory), was outlined as one of the foremost duties of the believer. Women actively contributed to the expansion of Muslim territory and fought on the battlefield side by side with their male co-religionists (Ahmed 69-72). The Prophet Muhammad’s aunt Safiyah is reputedly the first Muslim woman to kill an enemy in battle. Another famed female soldier was Nusaybah bint Kaab, who in the Battle of Uhud shielded the Prophet from harm with her own body, thereby receiving thirteen wounds. In a later battle she even lost her hand, and the Prophet honoured her courage publicly. Further role models for later Muslim women include the Prophet’s politically conscious daughter Fatima, who as his sole surviving child and wife to his cousin and successor, Ali, kept Muhammad’s bloodline from dying out. Fatima’s and Ali’s daughter Zaynab holds a special place in the heart of Shia women. When the Sunni caliphs usurped power over the Muslim community after assassinating Ali, the rightful caliph, Zaynab and her brothers, Hassan and Hussayn, along with a group of followers traveled to Iraq to raise resistance there. In order to accompany her brothers, Zaynab divorced her husband. On the journey she took charge of the women and children. After their followers were massacred and she was taken prisoner at Karbala by the resistance-crushing army under Sunni command, she nursed the survivors. And she was the one to inform the Muslim community of the atrocities committed by speaking out publicly.

Zaynab became the heroine of Shiism and the role model that was deemed fit for Iranian women. Ali Shariati (1933-1977), an important ideologue and demagogue who was to Iran’s Islamic Revolution what Marx was to the Bolshevik Revolution, was instrumental in the promotion of this new Islamic ideal of Iranian womanhood. This new Iranian woman had to be politically conscious, religious, intellectually developed, strong, patient, and committed, militant and self-sacrificing, and yet at the same time loyal to her husband and family, compassionate, feminine, and modest in appearance (Reeves 121, 128). Thus, while women were considered inferior to men in daily life, they were seen as equal on the battlefield. Shariati’s ideal, epitomized by Zaynab, was emulated by many young militant women who donned the veil and fought as soldiers of Islam - they are even called “Zaynab commandos” (Reeves 128).

In the context of these powerful role models, it is not surprising that some girls begin to handle weapons at a tender age, much like the dolls and cooking utensils that can invariably be found in toy boxes elsewhere. These girls are likely to grow up to be volunteers joining the military training offered to female university students or to be a member of one of the underground guerrilla movements. Two examples of such movements are the Marxist People’s Fedayin and the Islamist-socialist People’s Mujahidin (both established 1965). Both previously fought against the Pahlavi and now against Khomeini’s regime, in a struggle for freedom and against the repression of opinion. Other groups welcoming volunteers are militant women’s organizations, such as the Society for Militant Women or the Militant Women’s Committee. Many women have chosen this extreme way of life, marked by bloodshed, violence, and tragedies, out of conviction for Islam and for justice. And it is exactly this conviction to the point of violence and self-sacrifice that was Neshat’s vantage point for her photographic series “Women of Allah” (Camhi 150).

Speechless (1996, fig. 6) is the title of a photograph consisting of Neshat’s portrait, cut off along the nose and overlaid with minute Calligraphy. Next to her cheek, at the height of her ear, a gun emerges from under the chador, pointed at the viewer so that one finds oneself staring at a gaping muzzle. Maybe it is not so much the woman portrayed who is speechless - if we pursue the argument that her voice is symbolized by the Persian text inscribed on her face - but the viewer who sees her/himself threatened by the gun. Although the gun conveys violence, at the same time its position also evokes an earring, an ornament enhancing feminine beauty. Neshat states, “The gun placed beside the woman’s cheek is at once a warning and an object of beauty. Both are divided in terms of their purpose - their combined statement is deliberately puzzling” (Goodman 53). However, the combination of a gun, an emblem of violence, with a woman’s face in such a way that the gun becomes an ornament seems less puzzling when we consider Ali Shariati’s notion of the ideal Iranian woman. He sees militancy and violent behaviour for the cause of Islam as a virtue, as an ornament, that grace and enhance her.

In Faceless (1996, fig. 7), a woman in a chador - only her upper body is visible - is pointing a gun at the viewer in a way that the gun obscures her own face. Her face is inscribed with large Farsi characters, the hand that emerges from the chador and holds the gun, with smaller writing. The gun covers the woman’s mouth and nose, but her eyes look directly at the viewer with an expression that can be interpreted as indifferent or sad. Does the title refer to the many unknown, and thus faceless, women who perished fighting for the cause of Islam? Does it refer to the fact that for most Westerners all women in a chador are reduced to the faceless cliché of the terrorist? Or, should we take it literally, that is, referring to the obliteration of the woman’s features by the gun? Again, Neshat raises many questions, but the deliberately pursued ambiguity of her images deny any easy answers.

The Concept of Martyrdom

Violence and death, sometimes in the form of self-sacrifice, often go hand in hand. Self-sacrifice and martyrdom play an extremely significant role in Persian history and Iranian collective memory. This concept is also addressed by Neshat in the “Women of Allah” series, such as in two variations of Seeking Martyrdom (1995, fig. 2 and fig.8) and in Untitled (1996, fig. 9). As in the previous sections, a brief historical outline of the subject at hand precedes the discussion of these images.

Iran’s history abounds with martyrs, beginning with pre-Islamic times, both mythical and historical. The first mythical martyr was the prince Iraj, who was killed by his two jealous older brothers because their father Faridun had bestowed the largest share of land as a heritage on him due to his superior leadership ability. Iraj, summoned to a meeting with his brothers, knew he would find death at their hands; nevertheless, he preferred death to a protracted war, which would have cost the lives of his subjects. Despite this self-sacrifice, Central Asia continued to be split by warfare: the Persian Iranians fought against the Turkish Turanians. It was in this prolonged war that the Iranian prince Siyavosh, who as a fugitive lived among the Turanians, decided not to fight for the same reasons as Iraj’s and thus faced death at the hands of a large Turanian army.

The most important event that coined Islamic Iran’s concept of shahadat, or martyrdom, is the massacre of Karbala in 680. According to Shia belief, strife around the question of who would be the Prophet Muhammad’s legitimate successor resulted in this massacre, which further led to the split between the two major Islamic sects, Sunni and Shia. The Sunni Umayyads had usurped power by assassinating Muhammad’s cousin and caliph Ali; Ali’s daughter Zaynab and his son Hussayn journeyed to Iraq to rally support for their cause, the return of the caliphate to the Prophet’s family. The Umayyad army followed them, surrounded them in the desert of Karbala, and besieged them, cutting off all water supplies. The besieged men, women and children suffered thirst in the searing heat for three days, before the Umayyad army killed all the men, taking the women and children prisoners. Hussayn was beheaded and became the most important martyr for the Shias, who mourn his death and those of his followers annually on the holiday of ‘Ashura with plays and self-flagellation. Many Shias willingly sacrifice themselves and their children in the fight against evil and for justice, because they take Hussayn as a role model. Furthermore, Shias believe that martyrs who die for the cause of Islam or on the battlefield will go straight to Heaven.

Ali Shariati made extensive use of the concept of martyrdom in his philosophy and even glorified it. The Iranians who adopted his ideology, and in particular the Mujahidin, saw and still see self-sacrifice in the form of suicide missions not as a waste of human life, but as a means to advance their highest goal of justice. What Westerners perceive as acts of terrorism, some Muslims see as the ultimate act of devotion to God. A concrete example of this concept of shahadat in the form of a woman martyr is that of Gohar Adab-Avaz, a twenty-one-year-old member of the Marxist, anti-Khomeini People’s Mujahidin, who was killed while carrying out the assassination of Ayatollah Dastghaib. The will she had written before embarking on her suicide mission reads: “I have always wished to become a martyr on the path to my goal. My soul belongs to Allah and the masses and whenever it is called upon it will fly out to them. I hope Allah will accept me in Heaven as the martyr of the people of Iran” (Reeves 171). It is important to note here that martyrs like Gohar Adab-Avaz not only die for the cause of Khomeini’s Islamic regime, but also in the fight against it.

In her images explicitly dealing with martyrdom, Neshat does not single out the cause for which the depicted woman fights - her convictions remain ambiguous. Seeking Martyrdom #1 (1995, fig. 2) shows a woman in a chador from her waist upwards, holding a propped-up rifle so that it bisects her face, the muzzle touching her forehead. Her heavily made-up eyes seem to overflow with tears. The white background against which she stands is inscribed with Farsi calligraphy, with a poem excerpt about the subject of martyrdom. The focal point of the image, however, is her hands clinging to the rifle, overpainted in blood red almost up to the elbows. Viewers will no doubt make the connection between the rifle and the “blood-stained” hands, but what is lost upon viewers without sufficient background knowledge of Islamic culture is the Shiite belief that Allah accepts as pure the prayers of someone who has washed in martyrs’ blood. Islamic practice requires to ritually wash before prayer, and, according to Shia lore, when Zaynab on the battlefield of Karbala could not find water, she washed herself in the blood of her martyred brother Hussayn (Larson 23). Neshat’s image, thus, not only addresses the issue of martyrdom in contemporary Iran, but adds a complex layer of meaning that is rooted in the history of early Islam and has achieved great significance in Iranian identity.

Seeking Martyrdom #2 (1995, fig. 8) also portrays a woman in a chador against the same background of Farsi poetry, in a hieratic pose holding a rifle and a tulip in her hands. Her face appears less saddened than in Seeking Martyrdom #1; instead, she seems to be daydreaming, staring into empty space. As the only coloured element in the composition, the yellow, red and green tulip immediately catches the viewer’s eye. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the tulip has become the icon for martyrdom, and it is an omnipresent symbol in the republic’s visual arts (Abedi and Fisher 345). The tulip is said to grow from the cheek of Siyavosh, the martyred Iranian prince from pre-Islamic times, and to be irrigated by the blood and tears of the martyrs and of those who were left behind. This imagery of course also came to encompass the martyrdom of Karbala. Thus, Neshat again uses a complex symbol well-known to Iranians, but not to her Euro/American audience, who - without ample explanation - might be left with the impression that Neshat’s intention here is to juxtapose the fragile beauty of a flower/woman with the violence evoked by the rifle.

Another image that requires elucidation is Untitled (1996, fig. 9). Most non-Muslim viewers probably are not even able to identify this image of a woman’s hand as signifying martyrdom. The hand is inscribed with calligraphy along her fingers and on the back of her hand, the fingers resting against the lips and chin of a woman whose face is cut off below the nose. The symbol of the hand, again, goes back to the battle at Karbala and to the popular Shia understanding of the events there. Seeing especially the women and children suffer from thirst in the heat of the desert while the Umayyad army blocked their way to the river Euphrates, one of Hussayn’s followers, Abbas, decided to attempt an escape and bring back water to the besieged party. Abbas managed to take a water skin down to the Euphrates, but when he filled it, the Umayyads’ arrows severed both of his hands and he had to carry the water skin between his teeth. Abbas never reached the enclosed group, as he was killed in a hail of arrows on his way back to the camp. Yet, the symbol of a hand, reminiscent of the wounds he suffered while trying to provide water, still evokes his heroic deed and death as a martyr. This symbol can be found, for example, on public drinking fountains in Iran, connecting the provision of water with the notion of martyrdom.

Conclusion

This essay explains the recurrent symbols and icons in Shirin Neshat’s photographic work in order to provide the viewer with some of the visual vocabulary necessary to do an informed and in-depth reading. By doing so, the essay defies the artist herself, since Neshat refuses to give an ethnographic explanation of Iranian culture or to translate meanings that are divergent in their original and Western contexts. This refusal can be evaluated in two ways: on one hand, Neshat leaves the reading of her work entirely open to the (in most instances uninformed) audience, drawing attention to the differing interpretive frameworks that viewers can bring to it. These frameworks can range from a Western feminist view (Muslim women are oppressed, veiled, and silenced, and in need of rescue), to an Orientalizing approach that is reproduced in contemporary journalistic stereotypes and clichés (Muslim women are beautiful, yet dangerous; weak, yet violent), to an exiled insider’s perspective (in this case, that of an Iranian-American), just to name a few examples. On the other hand, the fact that Neshat has succeeded so well within the Western gallery/museum complex, but less so in front of an Iranian audience, suggests that it is the elaboration of Western preconceptions of Islam and Iran, paired with the tantalizing hermetic quality of her work, that captures her audience. This dependence on Western preconceptions courts ignorant responses from uninformed critics and audiences. Neshat’s work can also be read, however, as a strategy to pique the viewers’ interest and to frustrate their attempts at an easy deciphering of the images. She invites viewers into a dialogue, for which she acts as a facilitator and mediator, since Neshat’s cosmopolitan identity makes her at the same time an insider and outsider to Iranian culture in general and Iranian women’s experience in particular. Hopefully, the viewer/dialogue partner will keep in mind the ambiguities and complexities of Iranian women’s experiences that emerge from a critical historical analysis of Neshat’s language of symbols, rather than remain mired in an Oriental mystique of veiled women, indecipherable poetry, and the puzzling presence of guns.