Shirrin Neshat Jealous Silence Analysis

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Shirin Neshat and Renee Cox come from different backgrounds. Cox is an African- American and Neshat is from the Middle East (Iran). Both artists use their bodies in different ways to express what their cultures are like.
Neshat, born in 1957, came from a culture where a person was free to express themselves until an Islamic overthrow, “Returning for a visit to Iran in 1990 after a twelve-year absence, Neshat was stunned by the magnitude of change. Women everywhere now wore the head-to-toe black chador, the version of veiling characteristic of Iran, which had been abolished in 1936” (Neshat 153). No longer did women have the freedom to do as they pleased, everything is dictated by the government. Shirin Neshat is shown wearing a chador and the writing on her face, while holding a gun. The work is called “Rebellious Silence.” Now the woman must wear chador, and do as the government says, but the gun represents that she is rebelling from the culture and wants things to be restore to the former, and reinstate the freedom that the she once had in Iran. That the women will no longer be subjected to wearing what the …show more content…

Using her body, she is showing what is was like, what African- American were subjected to, “She uses her own body in an attempt to reverse the objectification of black women and claim self-empowered subjectivity by freely presenting her own body in any pose for any purpose she wishes” (Cox 107). Cox’s “Hott-En-Tot” with fake breast and buttocks is bringing to light how the African- American culture was belittled and poorly treated. She does this image and many others not to keep black women stereotypes in place, but to show the negativity of the past. So, that she can continue to be an advocate it the African- American community. She is free to do as she wants, and African- Americans since that dark time in history have new found freedoms, no longer controlled by slave

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