Roja (2016) is part of a trilogy of video installations titled Dreamers (the other two videos of this trilogy are Sarah (2016) and Illusions & Mirrors (2013) starring Nathalie Portnam and premiered on the occasion of Biennale de Montreal in 2014) which explore the world of women’s dreams.
Roja, based on Neshat’s personal dreams and memories, traces an Iranian woman’s nostalgia for her homeland. Employing a surrealist lens and nonlinear narrative, Roja captures the desire for a reunion with “home”, with “mother”, with the “motherland” that seems welcoming at first but becomes terrifying and demonic in the end. For the artist her mother is her last connection to Iran. “I saw my mother coming as a little dot from a distance and I ran toward her and she run toward me and as we got closer I couldn’t even stop myself. I noticed that she is not really my mother but a monster.”
An emotional show to think about our identity and homeland in a period in which this issues are really contemporary and about whose we need to think and re-think with a special attention.
Shirin Neshat, Roja, 2016. Production Still. Copyright Shirin Neshat
Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
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Shirin Neshat, Nazakat, from The Home of My Eyes series, 2015,
Silver gelatin print and ink, 81 x 54 inches (205.7 x 137.2 cm). Copyright Shirin Neshat
Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels