Let her Sing! Shirin Neshat's Turbulent

Turbulent (1998)
Shirin Neshat
10 min. 35 mm

Turbulent is the first film of a trilogy made by Iranian American artist Shirin Neshat. The other two videos are Rapture (1999) and Fervor made in 2000. A dual projection set in opposites sides places the viewer at the center. Shot in black and white, the presentation of separate screens enhances the duality inherent in the work. On the one hand, the films presents us with a dark haired man with a goatee wearing a white shirt who sings on a theater stage. In the background a male audience listens to the man singing. With hands raised at the chest level, and in front of a metal microphone, he sings enraptured by the experience. The love song is from the thirteen century which lyrics were created by the poet Rumi. Both the man and the audience face the viewer.

On the opposite screen, the viewer is presented with the image of a woman. She is a singer facing an empty auditorium. She gives her back to the viewer who is unable to see her face. Veiled in black, she stands immutable between the stark and empty white seats of the theater. The placing of the woman at the center dressed in a black chador gives a gestalt quality to the image. While facing the audience, she sings in a deep male-like voice. She sings to no one, alone in an illuminated theater giving an eerie feeling to the scene. The continuos rows of empty chairs in the theater intensifies the sense of isolation.
Both images are accentuated by the theatrical illumination of space. The use of black and white accentuate the scene. At the center, the image of the man creates a triangular composition giving a sense of depth while, the image of the woman recedes in space. The juxtaposition of her black image against the white space heightens a sense of two dimensionality. Her image looks like a cutout shape creating a sense of flatness. This flatness serves as a metaphor to her absence in society.

The set of images of male and female are evocative of other set of oppositions such as the one and the many, the visible and the invisible, absence and presence. In contrast, the image of the male singer, is full and visible. He can sing and be seen, his side is full and the audience can identify with him. The woman, on the other side, is absent, nobody can see her, nor hear her. This works serves as a commentary on the distinction between man and women in Islamic society.

In an interview with London based writer Susan Horsburgh of Time Magazine, Neshat states that her work is a coming to terms to the ideology of the Islamic regime and the Revolution in Iran. According to Neshat, her images raise questions more than answers. Referring to Turbulent, she said that her work was a response to the prohibition of women to perform or record music. She questions the privilege that men have as a way of finding a mystical and spiritual experience through music while women have no access to such experience.

Neshat also states that her works are imbued of a certain naiveté, but her work is well thought out. Although, she incorporates Islamic iconography as visual elements in her works, her native culture is Persian, while her mother tongue is Farsi. In her practice, Neshat appropriates Arabic elements, to make her own critique of Islamic law as she experiences it from a distant exile. Through her practice, Neshat overcomes her own sense of dislocation.