SHIRIN NESHAT

I'm really interested in social justice, and if an artist has a certain power of being heard and voicing something important, it's right to do it. It could still be done in such a way that it's not aggressive or overly didactic. I'm trying to find that form.

The first years of my life in the U.S. were very difficult.

I believe we don't need to widen the divide between the West and Islam. Rather, we need to build dialogue to encourage tolerance and respect.

Being political is an integral part of being Iranian. Our lives are defined by politics.

There is nothing negative about a group of people crying out for democracy - and if my voice counts, I will be vocal.

I think of myself, an Iranian/American artist, and wonder what would I want if I'm ever imprisoned by the Iranian government for the work that I make? I answer: I would hope that the United States government comes to my rescue.

I believe and support the feminist movement, but I am not generally interested in considering women's rights in relation to equality with men, or in a competition with men, but rather within their own rights and feminine space.

My father was a doctor, but he was what I would call an intellectual - very well-read and very interested in knowledge. He insisted that I get as much education as my brothers.

Magical realism allows an artist like myself to inject layers of meaning without being obvious. In American culture, where there is freedom of expression, this approach may seem forced, unnecessary and misunderstood. But this system of communication has become very Iranian.

Every Iranian artist dreams of the black market. We don't care about making money.

I'm an artist, I'm not an activist.

The idea of feeling displaced, and never feeling safe anywhere in the world, where you always feel like you're safer if you're over there, is not just my experience. If you went to Iran today or an Iranian came to America today, or the fact that there are bombs exploding everywhere, there's just a tremendous sense of fear and feeling a desire for security.

To me, editing is not something you can do in a rush because the artists themselves are not always their own best editors. Time is absolutely everything.

My work has never been autobiographical. Although the subjects are driven on a personal perspective it's sort of elevated above me. I try to express something that is more a collective expression of crisis.

Beautiful woman wrapped in chadors, with huge machine guns in their hands. Brilliant, shocking, amazingly contradictory images. They compelled me to deeply investigate these ideas.

My mother is my last point of security in relation to my past, and if that breaks, I will not ever have that type of pure love or pure attachment.

Every Iranian artist, in one form or another, is political. Politics have defined our lives.

Those of us living in the state of in between have certain advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of being exposed to a new culture and in my case the freedom that comes with living in the USA. The disadvantages of course being that you will never experience again being a center or quite home anywhere.

Part of me has always resisted the Western clichéd image of Muslim women, depicting them as nothing more than silent victims. My art, without denying 'repression,' is a testimony to unspoken female power and the continuing protest in Islamic culture.

Art is no crime. It's every artist's responsibility to make art that is meaningful

Art is our weapon. Culture is a form of resistance.

I find that through the study of women, you get to the heart - the truth - of the culture.

There's something when you're always immersed in the natural landscape where it becomes your healer, in a way, at the same time that it also becomes sort of frightening. I guess that's how I see things, in that form of duality.

You're faced with creation, you're faced with something very mysterious and very mystical, whether it's looking at the ocean or being alone in a forest, or sometimes looking at the stars. There's really something very powerful about nature that's endlessly mysterious and a reminder of our humanity, our mortality, of more existential things that we usually manage to not get involved with very often because of daily activity.

In this Western world that we have, culture risks being [only] a form of entertainment.