Stories of Martyrdom, Shirin Neshat

This work is part of Shirin Neshat’s series Women of Allah, created in response to the expectations placed on Iranian women after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. By writing excerpts from Iranian women’s poetry in Farsi on the photograph, Neshat draws attention to the subject’s hands, one of the few uncovered parts of the female body allowed by Sharia law. Neshat highlights the contradictory existence of beauty and violence in her images, as well as in the structure of Islam.