Shirin Neshat - Women Without Men

On 1 March 2008, ARoS opened its doors to the world premiere of Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat's monumental film work Women Without Men, created in 2004-2008. It consisted of five video installations: Mahdokht, Zarin, Munis, Faezeh and Farokh Legha with a total of seven projections shown in five separate room constructions. Total playing time approx. 1 ¼ hours.

Neshat's new masterpiece is based on a banned 1989 book by Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur. The novel is set in 1953 - the year in which Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh unsuccessfully tried to avert a coup launched by American and British forces. The coup was designed to reinstate the Shah as absolute ruler to prevent the nationalisation of the country's oil wealth.

In her films, Shirin Neshat builds on the magical realism of the novel and allows the supernatural and magic to interact with the realistic narrative. However, she freely relates to the novel's plot, focusing on mood and tone in her work rather than a direct film adaptation.

It is the novel's five female protagonists - Mahdokht, Zarin, Munis, Faezeh and Farokh Legha - that Shirin Neshat portrays in a gripping drama about power and powerlessness. In different ways, the women come to terms with their former lives and leave the city for a garden where they find sanctuary for a while. For these women, life is a struggle for freedom and survival in a religious, sexist and socially marginalising society.

The artist drew inspiration for Women Without Men from a 1989 novel of the same name by Iranian author Sharhnush Parsipur. The novel is set in 1953 - an important year in Iran's recent history.

It was the year that democratic forces led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh were overthrown in a coup led by American and British forces. The coup reinstated the Shah as absolute ruler.

The book follows five women from different walks of life in Tehran who, against the backdrop of political and military turmoil and chaos, come together in a garden in the city of Karaj along winding roads. There is the unmarried teacher Mahdokht, the young prostitute Zarin, the two unmarried friends Faizeh and Munis, and finally the not-so-young middle-class woman Farrokhlaqa.

All the stories revolve around sexuality or lack thereof, ignorance and fear of it, taboos and oppression. About how the control of female sexuality by society and on a personal level by men, and not least by other women, becomes an important parameter in the exercise of power. The novel is part of the magical realist tradition, and Shirin Neshat maintains this surreal angle in her great epic drama about the lives of the five women.

The exhibition was created in close collaboration with Shirin Neshat and a catalogue was published, including an extensive interview with the artist.

For Shirin Neshat, the temporal coincidence between the Iranian people's attempts to achieve democracy and self-rule on the one hand and women's struggle for survival - through madness, flight, active resistance or adaptation - has been the driving force behind the creation of her compelling and unflinching new work Women Without Men.

Born in Iran in 1957, Shirin Neshat has lived in exile in New York for almost 30 years.

Shirin Neshat made her debut as an artist with the photo series Women of Allah.

(1993-97). These are complex, contradictory images in which the artist, wearing a chador and with handwritten text fragments on her uncovered body parts, focuses on coercion, power, life and death, martyrdom, love and sexuality.

Since 1996, Shirin Neshat has concentrated her artistic activity on video and film, and her entrance on the international art scene came with a bang when her video work Turbulent won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1999. This work is her first double projection with parallel film sequences, where the audience - by staying in the dark space between the two screens - is involved as a participant in the drama on the screens.

Turbulent was followed by a string of major video works such as Rapture (1999), Soliloquy (1999), Fervor (2000), Possessed (2001), Passage (2001) and finally The Last Word (2003). Several of these works were shown at Aarhus Art Museum's exhibition with the artist in 2002.

Shirin Neshat's art is based on her Islamic cultural background, but the themes and values she emphasises in her art are timeless and universal, and her works appeal to and inspire a large audience all over the world.