Turbulent by Shirin Neshat

Samuel Altidor

Professor D. Lemeh

ART 2000

Blog Entry 8

19 July 2013

Word Count: 220

Turbulent by Shirin Neshat

            Shirin Neshat is a very interesting visual artist. It can’t be easy being an artist in exile. Some of her works motivated Iranian youth to protest against a very oppressive regime. Not many artists can say that. I admire her courage. She’s a very strong woman. I specially enjoy one of her work: Turbulent. Even though I couldn’t understand the language, it was very easy to understand the message she was trying to convey in this two-channeled video installation. In Turbulent, Sharin Neshat contrasted the reception of male Iranian artists versus female Iranian female artists. What she’s trying to say is that Iranian male artists own the arts in Iran. The way she expressed that in Turbulent is the fact that while the male artist was singing to a packed venue, the female artists was basically singing to an empty theater. At the end of his performance, the male singer received a loud ovation, while the female singer received the silence of an empty theater no matter how impressive her performance was. I couldn’t understand what the female singer was saying but it sounded like an outcry for change. It is to say that female artists deserve the same recognition as male artists.