Shirin Neshat (Persian: شیرین نشاط; born March 26, 1957)[3][4] is an Iranian photographer and visual artist who lives in New York City, known primarily for her work in film, video and photography.

[17] Neshat's earliest works were photographs, such as the Unveiling (1993) and Women of Allah (1993–97) series, which explore notions of femininity about Islamic fundamentalism and militancy in her home country.

Neshat often emphasizes this theme by showing two or more coordinated films concurrently, creating stark visual contrasts through motifs such as light and dark, black and white, male and female.

In 2001–02, Neshat collaborated with singer Sussan Deyhim and created Logic of the Birds, which was produced by curator and art historian RoseLee Goldberg.

The full-length multimedia production premiered at the Lincoln Center Summer Festival in 2002 and toured to the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis and Artangel in London.

In this collaboration and her other projects that incorporate music, Neshat uses sound to help create an emotionally evocative and beautiful piece that will resonate with viewers of both Eastern and Western cultures.

Games of Desire, a video and still-photography piece, was displayed between September 3 and October 3 at the Gladstone Gallery in Brussels before moving in November to the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont in Paris.

The film, which is based in Laos, centers on a small group of elderly people who sing folk songs with sexual lyrics - a practice which had been nearing obsolescence.

[22] In 2009, she won the Silver Lion for best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival for her directorial debut Women Without Men,[10][23] based on Shahrnush Parsipur's novel of the same name.

[22] In 2022, she joined protests about the Death of Mahsa Amini, by showing her work Woman Life Freedom, at Piccadilly Circus, and Pendry West Hollywood.

"[34] In 2010, Neshat was named Artist of the Decade by Huffington Post critic G. Roger Denson, for "the degree to which world events have more than met the artist in making her art chronically relevant to an increasingly global culture," for reflecting "the ideological war being waged between Islam and the secular world over matters of gender, religion, and democracy," and because "the impact of her work far transcends the realms of art in reflecting the most vital and far-reaching struggle to assert human rights.

[35] At the 2017 Salzburg Festival, Neshat directed Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida, with Riccardo Muti as conductor and Anna Netrebko singing the main character.

[36] Asked by the festival organizers about the particular challenge for an Iranian woman to stage a play that deals with the threats of political obedience and religion to private life and love, Neshat said, "Sometimes the boundaries between Aida and myself are blurred."