Two Iranian Artists and the Revolution - The New Yorker
Two Iranian artists—Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and Shirin Neshat—had retrospectives open this year, one at the Guggenheim, in New York, and the other at the Hirshhorn, in Washington. Both women were born in Qazvin, a former capital of the Persian Empire, about ninety miles northwest of Tehran, and a bastion of religious conservativism. The shows reflect the difficult choices artists face after a revolution. Both artists had to choose between revolutionary Iran and America. They took diver...