Awarded at the Venice Biennale in 1999, \u201cTurbulence\u201d is a video installation which consists of two black-and-white screenings on two opposite walls in a dark space. One of the walls shows the Iranian singer Shahram Nazeri: in a close-up, looking towards us and turning his back on a male audience while performing a playback of one of his popular songs. In front of him, on the opposite wall, the singer of unconventional music Susan Deyhim, dressed in a black cloak, turning her back on the camera and hoping for an end. Once the man is finished and has greeted his public, the woman turns towards the camera and starts to sing facing an utterly empty room. On the opposite wall, men -yet present- remain indifferent; we do not know whether they see or hear her. Shirin Neshat portrays the muslim music world in a simple way -in which female artists are excluded-, an also reflects on gender roles inside the Iranian society, focusing on its delimitation and territorial organisation. In the images construction, space becomes the main character: a symbolic space inhabited by the tradition that Shirin Neshat tries to overturn so as to enable the existence of new spaces where to create more topical purports. Thus, the double video screening displays symbolically the Iranian society on its whole: the full and male audience versus the female emptiness. This separation is emphasised by the use of colour: white for men and black for women. Once shown the dichotomy, Neshat overthrows its validity through a position shifting which gets revealed after a deep reading of the piece. The impassivity of men versus the inroading of women; the uniformity of their appearances and their inactivity mildly let them devoid of their own presence, gradually turning from positive to negative, from full to empty. With regards to the woman, the extent of her own tragedy and the theatricality of her figure slowly fills the empty space while the absence becomes presence. The spaces screened on the projections get disarticulated and the installation\u2019s power of staging which divides itself into two physical areas (highlighting the distance between men and women) gives way to a space for negotiation and reconciliation. Shirin Neshat opens a room for confrontation in which visitors will find themselves forced to react. It is this room where the artist wants us to reflect on the conflict; an intermediate space created for dialogue which represents the desire for change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Awarded at the Venice Biennale in 1999, \u201cTurbulence\u201d is a video installation which consists of two black-and-white screenings on two<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16622,"template":"","meta":[],"movie_genre":[239,220],"movie_tag":[833,834,1087],"class_list":["post-16624","movie","type-movie","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","movie_genre-video","movie_genre-video-installation","movie_tag-2020-en","movie_tag-festival-2020-en","movie_tag-festival-2027-en"],"yoast_head":"\n