D’Amelio Terras, New York
May 15 – June 19, 1999
D’Amelio Terras is pleased to present Shirin Neshat’s video installation, Rapture, from May 15 through June 19, 1999.
In this new 13 minute video-and-sound work, Ms. Neshat continues to explore the social, political and psychological dimensions of women’s experience in contemporary Islamic societies. Rapture was filmed in Morocco and, similar to her last video installation Turbulent, features two simultaneous projections on opposite walls. On one projection, over a hundred men, uniformly dressed in plain white shirts and black pants, populate a closed-in fortress by the sea, while the other projection follows a troop of women, wearing full-length black veils, as they make their way through the desert into the sea. The video installation is itself a study of gendered group dynamics, with the viewer literally positioned between two opposing worlds. Through visually striking dialectic polarities, Ms. Neshat addresses the social construction of space and identity in a language which resonates with universal relevance.
New photographs from the Rapture series will also be on view. Shirin Neshat has been widely exhibited all over the world. Rapture had its debut on May 5 at the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition, she will be included in the Venice Biennale and Looking for a Place at Site Santa Fe this summer. She was born in Iran and lives in New York City.
