Portrait of a Country: Interview with Shirin Neshat

How did you select the people to photograph?

I preselected these people when I was in New York. They [Yarat] sent me an extensive list of people and their pictures, and once I came [to Baku] a hundred people from the list showed up. Every one of them was interesting—I could have made a hundred portraits, but there was a limit to the available exhibition space, so I ended up with 55 photographs. I consciously chose from across different demographics—there are younger and older people, but also those of various ethnicities, including Russians, Turks, Armenians and Azeris.

You spoke about the portraits’ intensity as conveyed through their subject’s eyes and body postures. Could you elaborate more on the subtle differences in their poses, in particular the placement of the hands?

In 2013, I did this little project in Toledo, Spain, where I drew inspiration from El Greco. I was fascinated by the way he accentuated and exaggerated the hand in his religious paintings. [As part of the project] I created a series of eight or nine photographs that replicated El Greco’s works, as they are great examples of the highly stylized paintings of that period.

This idea was carried over in The Home of My Eyes, where there are some variation in the hand postures. It’s like a dance. I wanted to create an effect where, when you see the photographs together, they are not all the same—these people are not [uniformly posed like] soldiers. For me, this work is a celebration of our differences, which is translated here in the various ways we work with our hands. How each person [in the photographs] chose to use their hands says a lot about them—about who they are.

What was the process like working with the local Azeri people?

Most people didn’t know what they were coming in for. They didn’t know about art, and we didn’t speak the same language. Before I photographed them I interviewed each person and asked a series of questions relating to their ideas of “home.” When I photographed them, there was physical contact between us—I would comb their hair or make little changes to their clothes—and I believe this shared experience of touch made them feel cared for and important. I promised them that I wouldn’t make them play a role that wasn’t who they are. I wanted them to be themselves. As the shooting progressed, each person found their own comfort zone [in regards to what to do] with their hands. In my films I usually work with actors who are posed, but it wasn’t the case here. I see [The Home of My Eyes] as a kind of documentary piece: how do you take the average citizen who is not at all comfortable in front of the camera and convey their importance, while also creating something that is highly aestheticized?

In general, what could you say about the local people’s answers to your questions about “home”?

There was something very nationalistic that came out in most of their answers. It’s perhaps because this country has only been independent since 1991. No wonder they feel so proud.

Are the interview answers of the local people the text written on the photographs?

The text I’ve used to inscribe on the photographs are integral to the concept of the work. Nizami Ganjavi (1141–1209) was a very important Persian poet who moved to Azerbaijan during the 12th century, and now many people claim that he is Azeri. The Iranians and Azerbaijanis are fighting over this poet! What we did in my studio is that, in addition to the answers that people gave for The Home of My Eyes, which were only a few lines each, we also selected a collection of Nizami’s poetry in Farsi and added to it the local people’ answers. Each person had their own answers written on the part that showed their bodies. No one can probably read it [because of the minute and stylized nature of the writing], but I swear that we took sheets of paper and very carefully translated the text, line by line, from Azeri to English to Farsi. It became a mantra for each photographed person. Poetry added to the emotion of the work, and it’s beautiful. It’s an added layer of aesthetics that I’m not shy about.

Your practice of late tends to lean toward video and film. How did you feel going back to photography and how does your approach to the medium overlap with your process working with moving image?

For me, the return to human portraits is actually very strange, because I’ve recently been busy making movies and video installations. What I love about human portraiture in photography is the ability to take ordinary people and make them important. I think of these people as sculptural monuments. I feel that my photography has become more and more narrative, and that’s because of my interest in cinema and filmmaking. I can no longer make a single photograph that just works on its own. This [commissioned installation for Yarat] is one piece. When it comes to photography I don’t use a background. I’m consistently a minimalist; I reduce my elements to the hand, face and gaze and sculptural relation to the human figure. But this is not the case in film and video, [where] I use a lot of landscape, choreography, music and, at times, color. There’s nothing more powerful than human expression in portraiture. In photography I’ve never been seduced into using color, landscape or any objects. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is okay to go make films that are more complicated. [Photography and film] are essentially two different mediums.

Given that The Home of My Eyes is a commissioned work, do you see its concept relating to your overarching oeuvre?

What’s very special about a commission is that it changes the course of an artist. I could forever make works about Iran and Islam; but then, for this particular instance someone proposed that I do a work about Azerbaijan, and suddenly I’m thinking, “Can I really do that?” It forces the artist to really expand their horizon artistically, and I think this is a gift that Yarat has given me. I’ve noticed that every time I do a group of portraits they have captured a moment of Iranian history: Women of Allah (1993–97) is about the Islamic Revolution (1979); The Book of Kings (2012) is about the Green Movement and the Arab Spring (2011–13); my movie Women Without Men (2009) is about the 1953 coup d’état [that overthrew its then prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh]. Subconsciously, every narrative, and every work I’ve done, goes back to capturing a portrait of a country at a particular moment. I think in many ways, this new work captures the portrait of Azerbaijan today—at least from the perspective of an outsider. A local artist would give you a different kind of portrait.

Your previous works tend to be politically driven. Would you say you are an activist?

I’ve never been really good at spreading “propaganda.” In principle, I’m against art that is biased or overtly one-sided. I have my own political views, and they’re always candidly integrated into my work. The way that I frame questions into my art [convey] my point of view; that’s my criticism. I don’t appreciate any works that tell me what’s right or wrong. I believe that people should be able to decide on their own. I think we should be politically conscious and address issues that are really important, whether socially or politically, but we shouldn’t tell people how to think. I try to create work that makes people think about certain situations, while keeping it open for interpretation.

“The Home of My Eyes” is currently on view at Yarat Contemporary Art Centre, Baku, until June 23, 2015.

Sylvia Tsai is associate editor at ArtAsiaPacific.