Portrait of the artist Shirin Neshat standing in Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, while being interviewed alongside a backdrop of her art

In Conversation: Shirin Neshat

11 December 2014

Shirin Neshat is a visual artist living in New York City in self-imposed exile from her native Iran. Her experience of being caught between two cultures dominates her creative work.

We interviewed Shirin at Mathaf in November 2014 during the installation of her solo exhibition Afterwards. She spoke beautifully of her motivations and her choice of artistic methods, as well as her hopes for her first exhibition in the Middle East.

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I consider myself an artist of fiction...through the realm of fiction you can actually get closer to the truth.

Shirin Neshat

Black and white photograph depicting a frontal side portrait of an expressionless woman, while having Arabic calligraphy written on her face

Speechless (1996), part of a series of photographs titled “Women of Allah”