Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, Dubai
New York, Phillips de Pury & Company, Contemporary Art, 16 May 2008, lot 320, page 121
Patrick Painter Inc, Santa Monica

Literature
Nana Asfour, Women Under the Influence, Bookforum, April/May 2008, illustrated on page 12


In 1975, Shirin Neshat left her hometown of Qazvin to study at the University of California, Berkeley. After almost 20 years of being away Neshat visited her motherland 1990 for the first time. Neshat's artistic career started from a very personal place; deeply saddened and affected by how the Islamic revolution had completely transformed the landscape of her beloved country. In 1993, she produced her first politically charged body of work; the Women of Allah series, which gained her worldwide recognition.

This hauntingly beautiful black and white still image is captured in an allegorical Islamic Republic of Iran where the men and women are forcefully separated from one another both physically and metaphorically. Filmed in Morocco in 2000, Fervor is a two-channel video, which features a female protagonist in a black chador on one screen and a male protagonist in a white shirt on a parallel screen. The two characters give each other sideways glances and do not act on their clearly amorous desires. Their love remains unrequited, their relationship unresolved. They pass on foot in route to a gathering where a mullah (Islamic priest) preaches to a segregated crowd about being chaste.

The black & white medium was an instant reflection of the clear-cut contrast between the men and women in the mosque, with women in black veils and the men in white shirts. This understated work of art is titillating and frustrating, revealing Neshat's layered intentions. In this body of work Neshat is specifically interested in the problematic position of concepts like temptation, sexuality, and desire in the Middle East, but is more broadly interested in the tension created between individuals and the social order.

A prominent and incrusted symbol of the Islamic revolution, the chador is a dominant feature in all of Neshat's works, marking the cultural gap between the West and the East, the male and the female and the private versus the public spheres. Her practice challenges preconceptions of Middle Eastern women and addresses the cultural, political and social concerns women face in a contemporary Islamic society.