Kyong park shirin neshat passage

Shirin Neshat, an Iranian-born artist educated at Berkeley, is best known for her provocative  photographs and films that depict the complexities of challenges faced by women and their  relationship with traditional Iranian culture.

     Shirin Neshat was born in Qazvin (approximately 100 kilometers northwest of Tehran, the Iranian capital) in 1957.

 She was one of an affluent family with five children, and her father was a physician, whom she described as a “very educated and progressive man” ("Shirin Neshat: Iranian Exile & Artist").  Her mother was “a more typical Iranian woman” who, having received almost no education, was committed to family and domestic life (MacDonald).

 The Neshat family supported the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, whose goal was to modernize and westernize Iran so that it could become a global power along with the western nations.