Ebook: Contra las identidades primordiales: las encarnaciones de Shirin Neshat en Women of Allah (1993-1997)

The Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat (Qazvin, 1957) produced in the United States the photographic series Women of Allah, between 1993 and 1997, with which she gained wide international recognition. In this series, she reflects on the affective and identity universe of Iranian Muslim women who participated in defense of the nation, in the context of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). Based on this, Neshat uses her own image to critically embody the cliché of the woman veiled with a chador that has obsessed the Western hegemonic media and that also responds to the model of "virtuous woman" that has constructed the official discourse of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The main objective of this study is to analyze how, through the use of self-representation and Iranian poetry written by women, the artist subverts these models of representation.