Stories of Martyrdom from the series ‘Women of Allah’

Stories of Martyrdom is a part of the photographic series, ‘Women of Allah’, highlighting Shirin Neshat’s most distinctive style of visual representation. Following her first visit to Iran after living in exile, she produced this series between 1993-1997 in response to her experiences and the complexities surrounding the portrayal of Iranian women. The black-and-white colour scheme mirrors newspaper coverage of women’s involvement in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War that followed. In this series, the figures are mainly modelled by the artist herself, frequently wearing a chador, a garment that shows only a woman’s face, hands and feet, which serve as Neshat’s primary focus.

Other elements symbolising the paradox of women’s empowerment and oppression include the recurring depiction of guns. Within the calligraphic inscriptions reminiscent of henna, Neshat often quotes modern Iranian women writers and poets whose literary work touched on the notion of martyrdom as an ideological force of devotion and violence. Here, the artist quotes excerpts from the novel The Drowned (1989) by Moniro Ravanipour – whose themes of war and destruction and their effects on women fascinated Neshat.