Iranian-born Shirin Neshat says of being an artist in exile in the US: "Politics doesn’t seem to escape people like me ... politics has defined our lives."In Iran, as a result of her political, feminist works, she faces censorship, torture and even execution, while in the West she is confronted with the pain of being separated from the people and country she loves.It is this push-pull that shapes much of her photographic and video installations, which investigate "issues of gender, power, displacement, protest, identity, and the space between the personal and the political", but it is the following statement that I found particularly relevant to an SA audience. We are fighting "two battles in different surrounds. [We are] critical of the West ... of the image that is being constructed about us, our women, our politics, about our religion ... we are there to take pride and insist on respect. At the same time we are fighting another battle that is our regime, our government, our atroc...
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