Shirin Neshat (1957, Qazvin, Iran), lives and works in the US since 1974. He has had solo exhibitions in art centers and museums around the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art (Finland), the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Wexner Center in Columbia (Ohio), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the MUSAC in León or the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. Neshat has also participated in Documenta 11 (2002), the Whitney Biennale (2000) and in 1999 she won the Golden Lion at the XLVIII Venice Biennale. In 2009, she was awarded the Silver Lion for best direction at the Venice Film Festival for her film Women without Men. She has also received accolades such as the Hiroshima Freedom Prize and the Lillian Gish Prize. In 2008, her solo exhibition Women Without Men opened the ARoS Kunstmuseum in Denmark, she traveled to the National Gallery of Contemporary Art in Athens and opened the Kulturhuset Stockholm in the fall of that same year. Shirin Neshat is currently producing her second feature film about the life and art of the legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum.