3rd of May

Shirin Neshat, Ramin, 2012.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features New York-based artist Shirin Neshat, who joins me to discuss the art she’s made in response to Iran’s Green Revolution and to the Arab Spring. “The Book of Kings,” an exhibition of Neshat’s work is on view at Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York through February 11. A detail from Neshat’s My House is Burning Down (2012) is featured in this week’s banner.

Neshat has been the subject of major survey exhibitions at museums in Spain, Germany, England, Italy, Mexico, Canada and the United States. Among many other honors, she won the Silver Lion at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival for “Women Without Men” and the First International Award at the 1999 Venice Biennale. Next year the Detroit Institute of Arts will present a major retrospective of her work.

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In our conversation Neshat and I discuss:

The passion she feels for her homeland of Iran even after having lived abroad for 37 years;

The challenges inherent in making art for audiences in Iran and the Middle East when Neshat lives and shows in the West;

The ways in which her art is seen in Iran today;

How the uprisings in the Persian and Arab worlds motivated her newest work; and

Why metaphor is such an important strategy for her.

Neshat’s work has been featured on Modern Art Notes and in my writing frequently over the years, including:

A 2005 profile of the artist for the Los Angeles Times;

An essay on Tooba (2002) and Neshat’s thoughts on Tooba; and

A suggestion that The White House screen The Last Word (2003).

This week’s program also features Museum of Fine Arts Houston curator and MFAH International Center for the Arts of the Americas director Mari Carmen Ramirez. Today the ICAA launches a new digital project: Documents of 20th-century Latin American and Latino Art, a major online archive that will include 10,000 primary source documents about Latin American and Latino modern and contemporary art.

The Modern Art Notes Podcast is an independent production of Modern Art Notes Media. It is released under this Creative Commons license.

For images of the works discussed on this week’s program, click here.