CU Cinema presents acclaimed artists Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari

Tonight, Nov. 21, in conjunction with the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art and the Visual Culture Colloquium, Cornell Cinema is presenting acclaimed visual artist Shirin Neshat and her collaborator, Shoja Azari, who is a filmmaker in his own right.

Shirin Neshat, "Rapture," production still, 1999. Larry Barns

Neshat will give an artist's talk as part of the Visual Culture Colloquium this evening at 5:15 p.m. in the Johnson Museum. At 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre, Azari will present his feature film debut, "K," which is composed of three short interconnected films based on stories by Franz Kafka. On Friday evening at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre, both Neshat and Azari will be in attendance for a program of the eight short films the two have collaborated on between 1998 and 2002, films that form the basis of Neshat's video installations.

Born in Qazvin, Iran, in 1957, Neshat came to the United States to study in 1973; born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1958, Azari came to the United States in 1983. Fourteen years later, the two met and began an artistic collaboration that has resulted in a body of work (short films, video installations and a multimedia theater piece) that has been exhibited around the world. Prior to meeting Azari, Neshat used to work primarily in still photography. Her emergence as a maker of film and video installations coincided with the blossoming of Iranian film in the 1990s, although her films only suggest the dramatic Iranian desert; most have been shot in Morocco, as her work is too controversial to be welcomed in her home country.

"Neshat's work addresses the social, political and psychological dimensions of women's experience in contemporary Islamic societies," said Heidi Zuckman Jacobson, curator of the Berkeley Art Museum. "[Neshat] became fascinated with the situation of women in her native country after visiting Iran in 1990 for the first time since the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The gender politics of Islam -- embodied by the image of the veiled woman -- are often subjected to caricature in the West. Neshat's installations resist stereotypical representations and instead explore the complex intellectual and religious forces shaping the identity of Muslim women throughout the world. ... The beauty and power of Neshat's work resides in the combination of saturated, sublime imagery and hypnotic, complex soundtracks. The lasting effect results not only from expanding perceptions and combating stereotypes,but the latent realization that the issues Neshat presents, seemingly exotic and culturally specific, are in fact essential and universal: identity, empowerment and freedom."

Neshat and Azari's visit is cosponsored with the Cornell Council for the Arts (in conjunction with this year's theme, Art and Politics/Politics and Art), the Johnson Museum, the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Iranian Students Organization.

For more information, call 255-3522 or visit http://cinema.cornell.edu.