Shirin Neshat / Living in One Land, Dreaming in Another

"Dreams reside within everyone—they are universal."
 Shirin Neshat (born 1957 in Qazvin) is an Iranian-born artist, photographer, and filmmaker currently based in New York.
 Her work exudes a confident and energetic presence, yet also a fragile and vulnerable delicacy. Her consistent explorations of themes of identity, origins, and power structures give her work a unique resonance, fusing and expanding upon the rich visual traditions of both Persia and the West.
 This book is a collection of Neshat's works published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Pinakothek der Moderne, an art museum in Munich, Germany, showcasing his work.
 This exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Written Art Collection, will showcase her most representative works, as well as her latest work, Land of Dreams (2019), shown for the first time in Europe. Combining photography and video into a single work for the first time, the work poetically and sharply depicts the light and dark sides of the American Dream, drawing on the traditions of Persian calligraphy and portraiture.
 By superimposing interviews with the subjects about their dreams and summaries of those interviews on photographs along with Persian text and visual motifs, the individual stories are woven together like poetry, and common human experiences emerge. This fusion of visuals and text leaves a deep impression with every turn of the page.
 This book also includes important series such as Roja (2016), The Home of My Eyes (2015), The Book of Kings (2012), and Possessed (2001).
 The book also includes a preface by the director of the Bavarian State Painting Collection, detailed essays by Susan Babaie, Christian Behringer, Judit Csiki, and Thomas Kellein, as well as an interview with Neshat herself, allowing for a multifaceted interpretation of her artistic world.
 “Dreams are universal.”
 An air of confidence and vibrancy, but also vulnerability and fragility surround the works of the Iranian artist, photographer, and filmmaker Shirin Neshat (b. Qazvin, 1957; lives and works in New York). Central themes in Neshat's art are identity, origin, and power structures. Her works are defined by a melding and broadening of the rich visual traditions of Persian and Western art. The US-based artist's work is now the subject of the museum's first presentation in association with the Written Art Collection.
 Neshat's most recent work, Land of Dreams (2019), revolves around Persian calligraphy and Western canon of portraiture and combines for the fist time the media of photography and video in a single work. Combining documentary and fictional elements, it scrutinizes the American dream and its flipsides. The artist conducted interviews with the performed, asking them about their dreams, and then integrated summaries in Persian into the photographs together with traditional visual motifs. Interweaving writing, gestural expression, and formal variety achieves a rhythmical poetic density as it gathers individual narratives that reflect universal human experiences.
 The catalog accompanying the exhibition puts the focus on the conjunction of writing and image with a special focus on the series Roja (2016), The Home of My Eyes (2015), The Book of Kings (2012), and Possessed (2001). With a preface the director of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, essays by Sussan Babaie, Christian Boehringer, Judith Csiki and Thomas Kellein, and an interview with the artist.

 Publisher: DISTANZ
 Publication year: 2025
 Number of pages: 184
 Size: 320 x 215 mm
 Format: Hardcover
 Language: English
 Accessories:
 Condition: New
 First Edition