Becoming Van Leo A project by Negar Azimi and Karl Bassil, Arab image Foundation Self-portrait Cairo, Egypt, November 22, 1958 Collection Arab Image Foundation/ The American University in Cairo ©The American University in Cairo
A show of self-portraits curated by Shirin Neshat is on exhibit at the Leila Heller Gallery. Neshat began posing for her own camera in 1993 and this led to her series of photographs Women of Allah. Rather than a projection of her own persona, she styled herself after warrior women, drawing on the role Muslim women played in the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution.
Neshat says that her exploration into self-depiction was inspired by Frida Kahlo. “As a young art student in the mid 1980s, I remember developing an obsession with the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and her self-portraits. I was astonished by how her powerful paintings pulled the viewer in to her private world to witness the beauty and the horror she experienced in her personal life. Through the depiction of her own body and the use of visual metaphors, Frida Kahlo let loose her emotional and psychological anguish, her spiritual and moral orientation, and most importantly she revealed that art operates somewhere between the artist’s conscious and subconscious.”
Shirin Neshat Photographed by Stephan Würth for SPREAD 2010
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