TED Radio Hour - Artist in Exile

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

Shirin Neshat is seen as a powerful voice for Iranian women...but her art has never been shown in Iran. She speaks on life in exile and how her acclaimed and controversial art is shaped by politics. You can watch a version of this interview on YouTube here. TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without ads. Sign-up at plus.npr.org/ted.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

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From TED and NPR, I'm Manus Shumeroody. I had a very happy childhood, and we had lived in a beautiful house with beautiful gardens. Shireen Nishat grew up in Gazvine, Iran in the 1960s and 70s. My 17 years of living there, and it was very happy. But when she turned 17, her parents, like many Iranians who could afford it, wanted her to go to college in the U.S. I was sent to study abroad and everything went wrong after that. Because in 1979, while she was thousands of miles away, the Islamic Revolution began. I was supposed to go back, but the revolution happened.

But also Iran and U.S. had been. this diplomatic breakdown. So there she was, on her own in the U.S., her homeland in turmoil, studying art at UC Berkeley. Unsuccessfully, I would say I was one of the worst students. Mind you, that this was the time I found out that I wasn't able to go back and economically I had to support myself. And so the last thing I could think of was my studies.

My art just became worse and worse. And yet now, over 40 years later, Shereen Nishat is one of the most famous Iranian artists in the world, even though she never moved back. In fact, living in exile became the force that drove her work. Those years became the foundation of the dark side of me. But I was very lucky that I pulled myself out of this dark side. I'm very strong and I'm very optimistic and I'm a survivor.

But I did it by myself. I earned it. I earned my freedom and I earns the success that I brought to myself, my name and the work that I make. It comes from me. Today on the show, the Iranian artist and TED speaker, Shereen Nishat, how she became a world-renowned and controversial artist. Combining photography with calligraphy and video, winning the award for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival, and becoming a voice for Iranian and Muslim women, even though her art has never been shown in Iran. A quick warning, we discuss political violence and sexual assault, but include no specific descriptions.

You know, my work for so long has been focused on the female body in Islamic cultures, and at least I know since my upbringing that I always had a problem with my body as a woman. It was always connotated as a notion of sin, shame, guilt. We repressed all sense of desire, temptation. But the other thing I've been very interested in is how the female body has been a contested space for political, religious and ideological rhetorics. And the female body is

like a very potent, very controversial and problematic issue in my culture in Iran. Here's Shereen Nashat on the TED stage. The story I wanted to share with you today is my challenge as an Iranian

woman artist living in exile. Politics doesn't seem to escape people like me. Every Iranian artists in one form and another is political. Politics has defined our lives. If you're living in Iran, you're facing censorship, harassment, arrest, torture, at times execution. If you're living outside like me, you're faced with a life in exile, the pain of the longing

and the separation from your loved one and your family. Therefore, we don't find the moral, emotional, and political space to distance ourselves from the reality of social responsibility. For several days now, protests have spread in Iran. Police have violently broken up some of them. In September 2022, the death of 22-year-old Masa Amini sparked a wave of protests in Iran. Protesters have chanted death to the dictator,

and I will kill the one who killed my sister. Amini had been detained by the country's morality police for not wearing her headscarf or hijab properly. Her family rejects the police explanation that she fell ill after being arrested, saying she was beaten. Her death kicked off the largest demonstrations against the government since the late 70s. Crowds have taken to the streets in dozens of cities all across the country. All under the slogan, woman, life, freedom. Women are burning their headscarves and protests are sweeping, thousands of cities.

You know, people have had enough. Women have had enough. Since then, protests have flared around the country, and many women are choosing to take off their headscarves in public. Back in New York, it's all Shireen can think about these days. I think that for almost all of us Iranians, life hasn't been the same since the day that Maswaamini was killed. It awakened a certain feeling, which was a mix of emotions.

immediate anxiety about innocent young woman being murdered for a simple reason of flawed hijab, but also that all instigated a whole movement that brought a lot of hope and excitement for possibility of change that for the most of us, I think we didn't anticipate. So it's the most pivotal, important political upheaval since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. And I think what feels different, is that it started by women and about the woman. It's been a true roller coaster, in the one hand, this euphoria about this revolution, woman life freedom, yet witnessing the tragedies of people being executed, people being imprisoned, tortured, and the story just continues.

Let's talk about your latest exhibit. It's called The Fury. It's at the Gladstone Gallery in Manhattan. I had the pleasure of checking it out. It's some photography, some film as well. As a viewer, you walk into this enormous dark room and on one side is one screen that begins by showing her the young woman dancing sort of seductively. And then you look over to the other screen that's directly across from it, massive, massive enormous screens. And you see a man watching her dance.

And he's clearly in a military uniform. One of the things that I had not focused on is the female body not only as an object of desire, but an object of violence and sexual violence, particularly when it comes to the people of power and the force of authority once the women are in prison and incarcerated. So for me, this was always a very big issue. And this video, although it looks like and feels like it's made about the current issues anyway, Iran, but I made this video six months before. And so the story of the fury evolves around a woman who is free in the U.S., but is unable to disconnect from the trauma of what happened to her in

Iran. I would say that she had reached a point of madness, where she's unable to connect to the reality where she is. So it's all about what happens when a woman is sexually assaulted, that It never becomes whole again. There's also another room where you have portraits of women. Some of them are done in a style that we've seen you do before, which is large, black and white. And then as you step closer to the woman's face, you see that very small script is written over it in Farsi.

Yeah, I have to emphasize something very important. My work has always been about empowering women and the strength of the woman and how complex it is to be a woman where I come from. And the images of the photographs, you have at once images of a woman who are very defiant and standing very tall with their naked body and beautiful, really, no matter what age they are, what size they are, where they come from. And yet you have images of a woman who have been bruised and sexually assaulted. And so the writing I took from the poetry of the beloved Persian poet, Fulgha Farisad.

What I love about her poetry is she talks about the female body in the same way that I would like to talk about it. There's one that says, I feel sorry for the garden, the garden being a metaphor for a woman. No one is thinking about flowers. No one is thinking about the fish. No one wants to know that the garden is slowly dying, slowly forgetting is green. moments. Her poetry has been ingrained in me since I became an artist and the way in which she uses analogy of nature with women and women's bodies and their needs and their relationship living in very oppressive society, whether it's due to traditional or religious rules.

But this exhibit is different, right? Because it's not just Iranian women who you're photographing. And this is the first time you've showed women, new. as well. Yes, yes. Does it mark a sort of passage for you? You know, I have lived outside of Iran for so long, and I decided that I need to turn my lens into this country where I've immigrated for a longest time, but also that my subjects are truly so universal. And I think this chapter of my work is really come outside of Iran, you know, specifically. And as long as I'm Iranian, the work would be Iranian. There are some people. who have criticized that you make political statements about Iran in your work, but you have the

luxury of doing it from the safety of living in the U.S. How do you respond to those criticisms? You know, I've been, from my worst inception, I've been criticized. Oh, she's just trying to sensationalize violence, and she's trying to make oppression fashionable, and she's trying to market herself. And I think that's sad because I'm very open to criticism and I think that people could come to me and we could have a conversation. For example, I read somewhere they say, but this woman in this video is a victim, but the woman of Iran are so strong. I said, Maasana Amin was a victim. The woman who are rapes are victim. There's no denying the fact that we are protesting because the woman have been.

victimized. And I cannot apologize for who I am, you know. In the last weeks, there's been a lot of attacks on activists or people who have been vocal. And there have been, in my case, people have very aggressive in the social media. We have critics, but then we have the Islamic Republic bots, you know. There have been cases of some people who have been even worried about their lives, and these are very kind of volatile territories, very scary. In a minute, the first time Shereen Nishad visited Iran after the Islamic Revolution and how the shock she felt radically changed her approach to art. I'm Manus Zomerode, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

Stay with us. Folks, before we get back to the show, I want to tell you about a new TED Radio Hour Plus episode coming out next week. It's more with an amazing guy named David Senge, who is a pioneer in designing prosthetic legs to be more comfortable. And the story of why he decided to try and solve this problem, well, it's incredibly personal, but it also explains a lot about the history of Sierra Leone. It is fascinating stuff. It's never been on the show before. And it's coming next week to Plus listeners. Get these episodes and all our shows sponsor-free when you sign up at plus.npr.org or write in the Apple Podcasts app.

It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manus Shumeroody. On the show today, the artist in exile. We're spending the hour with the Iranian artist Shereen Nashat. Since the 80s, Shereen has lived in New York City. And I went to visit her at her home in Brooklyn, where she also has been. has her studio. Just to note, we do mention violence that took place during the Iranian revolution. So let's talk about how you got to be sitting here in Brooklyn with an art studio and a family. What was your childhood like? I mean, part of me wants to think that you were surrounded by art. Was that the case? Absolutely the opposite. I grew up a middle class, very progressive family.

what religious, not very religious, in a small city, Qazvin, which is, I would say, the third most religious city in Iran. My father was a physician, and my mother was a housewife, and I had a very happy childhood, and we had lived in a beautiful house with beautiful gardens. So my 17 years of living there, and it was very happy. Everything went wrong after that. when I was sent to study abroad, like many Iranian families send their children abroad. When you came to the U.S., did you think, like, oh, I'm just a visitor here, I'm going to get a college education, and then I'll take that with me back home? I actually didn't want to come here. My father more or less forced me to come because he really believed in education. He wanted his daughters as well to be educated.

But what was unexpected was that I was supposed to go back, but the revolution happened. The Shah of Iran is facing what is being called his most serious crisis. 3,000 students ran through the narrow winding streets of Tehran's Grand Bazaar, shouting death to the Shah. I was separated from the family for 11 years because of the revolution, but also Iran and U.S. had this breakdown, the diplomatic breakdown. So there is this very dark few years of my young adulthood that it was like a carpet pulled under my feet and I involuntarily find myself in a foreign country that I never wanted to come to anyway.

So 1979, the revolution is happening. Yeah. What do you remember of that time? Because, I mean, I was a child and I just remember the television was on all the time. Protesting Iranian students. are occupying the American embassy in Tehran. I'd never really thought about being Iranian before,

but suddenly it was all I could think about. I can only imagine what it was like for you. I remember the days that the hostages were taken and they were counting days. The police of the American hostages held in the U.S. Embassy now for 58 days. You know, as a student in UC Berkeley, there was a huge anti-Iranian student sentiments. And so I felt a lot of pressure

that people really disqualification. liked me because I was Iranian and I was very young and I was pretty horrified because the relationship had ended with Iran. The United States of America is breaking diplomatic relations with the government of Iran. And basically the television was on all the time and soon there was no mail exchange between Iran and the U.S. Then the phone was very episodic and the news in the U.S. was all against Iran. And it was a very violent time in Iran. They were also executing all the pro-Shah.

They were very bloody revolution. More officials prominent in the Shah's government were brought before a firing squad in Iran today. So what you were inundated with in the news was not only the hostages that were taking and the Americans hating Iranians, but also what was happening in Iran. That euphoric revolution ended up being super bloody,

super violent. Basically, they hijacked the revolution. Now we know. Hohmani came with the help of all this very hopeful students and forward-thinking young people, and basically he executed many of them and put them in prison, and he took over. The country became religious, and everybody started to flee. So there was this feeling of anxiety and horror, and then the war with Iraq to top everything. everything over. They were bombing Iran. So I was horrified with, A, not being able to hear from my family, B, feeling alienated with my own status as an Iranian, and not being able to go home and not to have support, but also this huge antagonism against Iranians. And I was just shrinking and shrinking. All I remember, I remember that I started to have to see a therapist because I

started become anorexic and I couldn't eat. I was just filled of anxiety. So those years for me were really hard years. It must have been so lonely. It was and also I felt bad because I never wanted to come to this country. So I became angry. So, you know, a lot of times when people look at my work, they don't really understand where the melancholy comes from, it's hard to explain the emotions of being an outcast, being cornered, being always an outsider, so much fear, so much anxiety of not belonging here, not there, and this absolute sense of desire to wanting to belong to somewhere, you know, and always being a loner. And I think the woman in my work are all me in a way, always trying to run away to save themselves

and being very strong but very fragile and vulnerable at the same time. So a lot of these things people read as if, oh, I went and studied and took inspiration from news and all these things, you know, and then I made it into artwork because it's so sensational and so attractive for the people. they have no idea so much of it is lived in. Like, I've lived it, you know? And so those years became the foundation of the dark side of me. But I was very lucky that I think I pulled myself out of this dark side.

And I'm very strong and I'm very optimistic. and I'm a survivor. But I did it by myself. Nobody handed it to me. And this is something a lot of people don't know. Okay, so let's talk about how you did that. You ended up leaving California and you made it to New York. Yeah.

New York in the 80s. It was a cool time in New York. It was Basquiat and Kiki Smith and Madonna was around. Yeah, I lived in absolute poverty. I had a master of fine arts. It was useless. I worked in hair salons to different companies to pay my rent. Even when I had my child, I remember I didn't have enough money to pay my rent.

It was a battle to be me. I worked for 10 years in a not-for-profit gallery where I washed the floor to answering the phone, to helping artists, to learning and becoming educated slowly, opening my eyes to this incredible, vital cultural. phenomena of New York in the 80s. I met incredible people, but I lived in absolute poverty. I married a man who had opened this incredible not-for-profit organization called the storefront for art and architecture. That was this intersection of art and activism, was art and social responsibility. And that opened my mind to how I could make art,

that why I could be so emotional and personal and poetic. could be also politically charged, you know? That's where I think I got my understanding and education about art. But I really struggled. I was still an outsider. That has been a fundamental part of my life is this feeling of vulnerability and lack of complete security or feeling like I belong, you know. It was 1990 that you ended up.

going back finally to see your family. You hadn't seen them in what, over a decade? Yeah, 12 years, I think. Yeah. What was that like? Well, it really was very shocking to see my family who were so cosmopolitan and my mother and my sisters so, you know, European-eyes. And now not only on the physical level with the hijab, but also how they had been transformed as people, how their priorities had changed and how they have managed to survive the hardship of the revolution but also the war with Iraq and have been isolated, not able to leave the country. It was so extremely strong this change.

For me, I found myself interested to study it. I wanted to just be there and I wanted to see what is this like? What did I miss? I came mainly to be reunited with my family and to reconnect in a way that I found my place in the society. But instead, I found the country that was totally ideological and that I didn't recognize anymore. More so, I became very interested

as I was facing my own personal dilemmas and questions. I became immersed in the study of the Islamic Revolution, how indeed it had incredibly transformed the lives of Iranian women. I found the subject of Iranian women immensely interesting in the way that the woman of Iran historically seem to embody the political transformations. So in a way, by studying a woman, you can read the structure and the ideology of the country.

Did you think about staying? Well, I had a husband and a kid and a job, but I wanted to spend more time there, but soon I couldn't go back anymore again. So it was not even a question. It was not possible. When you return to the U.S., after your first visit back to Iran in 1990, I mean, something creative was set a flame in you, right?

This was when you really found your voice. You made your name on the art scene. It was with two series of photos unveiling and women of Allah. Can you tell us about what happened when you came back and about those photos? Well, what happened was it became this journey of learning about what happened in Iran while I was gone. I started reading a lot of books. I was starting to interview a lot of my friends who had been there during the revolution. I became obsessed with the subject of martyrdom, which was Shah Hadat, which is a subject that became almost institutionalized during the Iranian revolution.

And where women and men were encouraged to participate in the military and go to war with Iraq, etc. And that led to a body of war called Woman of Allah, which was basically questioning. the mindset of any woman who voluntarily becomes militant and stands on that threshold of love of God, faith, religion, sacrifice, yet cruelty, violence, and ultimately death. To me, these were full of paradoxes. And so for me, this body of work also became an excuse for me to sort of continue my interaction with Iran while I lived in New York.

You know? But I didn't have a point of view at that point. I wanted to be neutral. I didn't want to point fingers. I wanted to say, to raise the question. Women of Allah is a series of large black and white photographs. A woman is wearing a hijab, often staring directly at the camera. She is posing with a gun.

Persian poetry is inscribed on her face, her hands. The woman is actually Shereen. These works made returning to Iran potentially dangerous for her. All of the work had the weapon, the female body, the attacks, and the hijab, the veil. I became the model for these photographs. I think rebellious silence, the one with the gun over my face, or speechless with the gun by the ear, or the two feet with the gun, there was something absolutely erotic and central and very beautiful, I could say, and yet extremely disturbing and dark and violence.

And that's where I wanted the work to be. And, you know, I think that I brought a lot of myself, not just my physicality, but my own problems with my body, you know. And so I would say, even though I played the role, and it wasn't about me, but I had so many issues about my body and being a Muslim woman, and yet I was not a fanatic,

and I was not a part of that revolution. So it became a kind of a convergence, a culmination of the issues that I had as an Iranian woman, and the issues that was not at all about me, and it became kind of a research, you know? I mean, that series of photographs made, you pretty famous in the art world. Were you surprised at the response?

I was. I mean, also I became attacked very quickly. I became attacked by the Iranian government and many people who accused me of supporting the Islamic revolution and the mandates of this regime. And many of the Western critics that they thought that I was doing this to bring attention to myself. So I wouldn't say success in a good way,

as it continues to be. But controversial, I would say, it became, I think, the better way of explaining it. You started making videos and these double-screen projections in the late 90s, and in 1998, you created a two-video installation called Turbulent. It shows a male and a female singer performing on separate screens. The male is in front of a packed audience. The woman is performing to no one. And this one, the first, International Prize at the Venice Biennale. Did winning at Venice change your life? Yeah, I mean, first of all, I have to explain that turbulent was my first move, serious move away from photography to a moving picture,

mainly because I felt with photographs they became so overly politically charged that it was impossible for the audience to distance their own political views about the subjects from the work. But with the video, you could use music, there was acting involved, there was production design, there was a whole new departure for me. You're smiling while you talk about this. Mind you, the turbulent, I met my current husband who was sitting in the other room, who was the singer of Turbulent, the Shoja Azari. So for me, it was after all those heavy criticisms over the photographs, I just turned my back against my own signature work.

And I reinvented myself. And what ultimately turbulent is about is exactly what we're talking about today is the rebellion and the strength of the woman to protest against a system that tries to bring them down and oppresses them, tell them, you're not allowed to sing. And so he is singing to a theater full of audience. But then she sings to an empty theater, but when she sings, she breaks every rule of traditional music. Her music is guttural, emotional, unpredictable.

It's absolutely stunning and powerful, far more victorious than the man. So what I wanted to do with that work, and continuously to this day, is to show that while the woman are always against the wall in Iran, they're always protesting, resilient, powerful. and ultimately rebellious, you know. Even if no one's watching. I mean, we are unfortunately living under repression, but we fight. We fight against the system. We're fighters.

Coming up more with Shereen Nishat, the highs of directing feature films over the past decade, and the lows of years of separation from her homeland. On the show today, the artist in exile. I'm Manus Shomerode, and you're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

I'm Manoosh Zameroidi. Today on the show, The Artist in Exile, we're spending the hour with Iranian artist and TED speaker Shereen Nashat. In the 90s, Shireen became known for her portraits that challenge stereotypes of Muslim women. large black and white photographs covered in Persian script. But then she discovered video. And that became my obsession with filmmaking, that, hey, I can tell a story, I can use music, landscape,

you know, choreography, sound design. And it just was opening to a whole new world. And there was no way to stop me from then on. In 2009, Shereen made her first, feature film and ended up winning the award for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival. Let's talk about your first feature film, Women Without Men. It takes place in 1953, a time in Iran when the U.S. and the U.K. helped overthrow the democratically elected leader, Mohamed Mosede.

Yeah. It's based on a novel by the same name. I'm so curious why you decided to go back in time, to go back in history. It's a period that feels very oddly unknown here in the United States. Was that part of the reason? You know, 1953 is, it's a fascinating period that is largely forgotten, particularly by Americans. It was when the American CIA overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister, Dr. Mossadegh, and brought back the Shah.

And it was one of the first time that we saw Iranian people revolting on the streets. This was a book called Woman Without Men. So we had a country fighting for his freedom and independence. But we had a few women also fighting for their freedom. Each one was running away from very distinct personal issues, whether it was traditional oppression or religious issue or whatever. They all ran away from the city of Tehran and gathered together in a garden in their orchard.

and tried to live together independent from the men. So it was this beautiful conceptual strategy of showing how the country of Iran became almost the fifth female character, also looking for an idea of freedom. Again, showing myself that, hey, I could take a risk, I could do something I've never done before, take your time, don't worry, you will never make money, but you achieve something, you know, and I'm very proud of it. There's this one scene that I love so much. It's when they are in the garden and, you know, they've gone through so much to get there to be together. And there's just this very mundane moment where one of them has made this beautiful platter of rice and brings it to the table. And they all look beautiful in their dresses and they spoon out big heaping piles of rice. And it's so simple.

And it's just women sitting, looking nice for each other and eating. and it's, well, it made me hungry as well, I will say. I mean, the allegory is very rich, right? Going back to the garden, to the orchard. It reminds me of all the things you've talked about, how you remember your own family's garden and sitting outside and drinking tea. So glad you brought that up,

because, of course, woman without men, is a magic realist novel. But the idea of an orchard, the garden, is a metaphor that repeatedly has prevailed in Iranian mystical, traditional literature and that it is a place both thought of as a place of freedom but also spiritual transcendence a place of peace a place where you can feel secure and you know we're all looking for that space of safety security and freedom I think we're always fighting to look for

that that notion of paradise which unfortunately it's always hard to arrive at I want to talk that we're in front of us to jost and wished, yawfding a shape of taze, a ray jadeid, be so of a rahai. I want to talk about your most recent film, Land of Dreams. It takes place here in the U.S.

And the protagonist is a young Iranian-American woman who works for the Census Bureau, but she doesn't just collect demographic data. She is also collecting people's recollections of their, most recent dream. Yeah. It's a satire, though. So talk to me. This feels different. Well, I have to explain first about my obsession about dreams. Dreams are very powerful because when we are dreaming, we always have this references to reality in the way that we recognize places we've been, but nothing is believable. Nothing makes sense, right? But in the movie, the American government

has this conspiracy that they like to spy on the people's subconscious. And therefore they have agents as Census Bureau. Hi, and Simin, I work for the Census Bureau. The people who go collecting data, they also ask, what is your last dream? Can you recall your last dream? And they say, that's very strange. You say, oh, that's the government rule. Yeah, it's for your security.

So people have to force themselves to remember their last dream. And I love the idea that Simin, just like myself, She's a very kind of crazy Iranian photographer, immigrant, and that she was, you know, going door to door, collecting people's dreams. I dreamed I was laying in my bed. I was sitting here in the living room. They were peacocks. I was stiff as a rock from the waist down.

And I heard this very loud noise. Beautiful feathers. All these people. And the lower half of my body was red. So there were two things at play. One was the narrative of this woman who obviously didn't quite fit in within the American culture and American people, but also was not quite an Iranian, you know, as she herself was raised outside. And so she had her own baggage as a person. Then we had the country of United States, and particular, it's treatment of immigrants. And so this is really an immigrant story about America. And it's really a a little bit of a story of myself and how I'm always feeling like an outsider, you know. And really my life has been alone in America for many years without the family. And really who I became is because of myself.

You've just said that you've always felt like an outsider. But I wonder if part of you, you live in New York City, you live in a neighborhood that is full of immigrants. Yeah. Do you feel a little more at peace? It's very interesting. As an Iranian, I thought forever that I feel always more at home around the Iranian community. But something has changed in me where I feel, especially in this community, in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where I'm surrounded by, as you said, working class, Hispanic community, African-American,

working class in a way that I relate to them more than anyone else in the world. And I feel completely at home, even if I don't speak their language and they don't speak my language, even if they have no clue what is my history as a person. I have no idea their history. And that I feel more at home here probably than possibly if I went back home to Iran. It sounds like in some ways the world that you knew before when you were a child

you almost had to bury it like it was gone and that must have been very disorienting and it still is while we talk about these issues it makes me think about some of the criticism that have been coming my way

ever since the beginning but especially lately I think there's so much much lost in translation and so much misunderstandings about people like me and I'm not unique, is that so many of us have lived in the state of nostalgia for so long. It's so painful that we've had to force ourselves to disconnect and not live the rest of our life in the state of memory and nostalgia. I cannot describe. And so I have a 93-year-old. mother that I speak with every day.

And she's on her very last chapter. And I've always had this dream of finally seeing her. And I know I won't. It's impossible. And it's like those painful, basic, painful thoughts, we just don't allow it because it's too devastating to live with that every day. You just say, and I say to myself after I talk to her, you know, this voice. it's not going to be there very long, then how are you going to feel?

I don't want to think about it. I don't want to think about it. So a lot of my work has been about this desire of starting over again and how is it possible. So I get very angry when people say things like, oh, wow, she hasn't lived in Iran for so long. What does she know? She shouldn't even have the right to talk about it.

Iran. They have no idea the amount of emotions that person like me and millions of others go through every day. It's very different than theirs. It's not a fresh wound like they have. It's an old wound, but it's still fresh because my mother is living. So a lot of this, what I'm telling you, is informing my work. You gave a TED talk in 2010, and in it you say, politics don't escape people like you. Oddly enough, an artist such as myself finds herself also in the position of being the voice, the speaker of my people,

even if I have indeed no access to my own country. And I guess it makes me wonder, have you ever wished that you could make art that didn't feel so laden with this heaviness, this sadness? It's interesting that we talk about this in 2003 months after Women's Life Freedom Revolution, that if we ever thought we can escape politics slowly, now it seems like we're back in it even bigger than ever. Yeah, I don't know.

I'm wondering where is my work going for, where am I heading myself psychologically, where is this revolution leading us? Would I go back where I thought I would never be able to go back? Would it be possible for me to imagine returning to Iran? Then what would that mean for my work? Would it stop being political? The course of my life has always informed my work. Would the drastic change of my life change my art altogether?

Would I be making artwork about flowers and jungles? I don't know. I have no idea. You know why? Because I don't know where my life is heading to. The uncertainty of my work, it's all tied to politics. And I think that for a lot of artists, it's a choice, you know. But there are some people whose life and work is inseparable,

and therefore they're not in total command of separating them. you have been using the term political art, not activist art. Yes, exactly. Can you spell out how you see the distinction? I'm so glad you bring this up because, especially this last few months, I really had to battle with this differentiation between where I draw the line between being an artist and being an activist. I always say being an activist, you have to distinguish between what is right and what is

wrong. Being an artist is you let the audience decide that. You don't tell them what is right and wrong. I'm very good at raising questions, not providing any answers. And those questions always relate to women, very much relate to the issue of oppression, religion, and really the question of freedom and what that means. You know, Iran has been always such a interesting culture because it's so paradoxical. It is a country that represents, you know, the worst of fanaticism and violence and revolutions and oppression.

And yet we are one of the most sophisticated, you know, rich cultures of humanity. We have the mystics, we have Rumi, Ferdosi, Chayam, Hafez. Today we have some of the best living filmmakers, artists, writers, activists, lawyers. So we surprise the hell out of the world. And I'm a survivor of such culture. And I am both constantly under attack, but I continue to prevail. It does make me wonder which parts of yourself that are Iranian have you held on to and which parts of you simply had to let go? That's such a good question. I feel that emotionally I'm still so Iranian. I can cry within a few seconds of hearing certain Persian music. It just works instantly.

you know, I think that my very foundation is very Iranian, but my character is very American in terms of my sense of independence and the stubbornness in the way that I would never be able to let go of that sense of self-control and independence. But I think that the melancholy and the sense of poetry that you see in my work is deeply ingrained in the Iranian poetry and Iranian sense of mysticism and I think this is the way I function in life is that there is a lot of pessimism

and there is a lot of despair in life and there's a lot of dark, disturbing issues but we have to be survivors, we have to look for resolution, we have to look for the light and I'm deeply optimistic. I will never, ever make any work that ends on a dark note.

It has to be uplifting and hopeful because I live that way every day. And I see all the things that bother me that makes me sad and makes me worried and anxious. But I look for an idea of resolution and something good ahead. And I think that many women share that with me and hopefully some men. You've been very gracious and invited us into your home. Yeah. Shereen Nashat, thank you so, so much. Thank you.

It's really indefinitely. And thank you so much for listening to our show today. There's a video of my conversation with Shereen Nashat. If you want to see the art that we discussed, go check it out on NPR's YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash NPR Podcasts. This episode was produced by Hirshan Nahata with help from Rachel Faulkner. White and Katie Montalione. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkampur and me.

Our production staff at NPR also includes Andrea Gutierrez, Matthew Cloutier, Fiona Giron, James Delahousie, and Julia Carney. Beth Donovan is our executive producer, and Sassil Davis Vasquez helped with research. Audio and video were recorded by Searing Bista, Annabelle Edwards, and Nikolai Hammer. Our audio engineers were Neil Tivalt and Margaret Luthor. Our theme music was written by Romteen Arablewee. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Feelein, Michelle Quint, Jimmy Gutierrez, Alejandra Salazar, and Danielle Balerezzo. I'm Manus Zamorodi, and you've been listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR.