Shirin Neshat

Triptych, cibachrome prints, two of the three signed, titled, dated and numbered '7/10' in ink on reverse of frame, each framed,

Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Exhibition Catalogue, Auckland, Auckland Art Gallery, Shirin Neshat, 2004, pp. 22-24, illustration of another example

Colour: The colours are fairly accurate in the catalogue illustration, althought there is more warmth to the flesh tones in the original. Condition: These prints have not been inspected out of their frames for the purposes of this report. Examination through the glass shows them to be in very good condition.
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Tooba, a two-screen video installation, commissioned by and first shown at Documenta 11 in Kassel Germany, is a mystical fable setting women and men in opposition.  Inspired by Shahrnoush Parsipour's contemporary novel Women without men, Tooba was the first of Neshat's works to be exhibited in her native country, at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

Continuing her visual discourse on the place and identity of women in Iran, Neshat moves Tooba beyond issues of personal displacement, explored in previous works, to focus on a larger notion of the metaphorical garden of paradise.  The title of the work is taken from the name of the sacred tree mentioned in the Koran.  In Neshat's video, the tree is set, alongside a central female figure, in an enclosed garden as a sign of a spiritual longing for paradise and a quest for political power.  As invading men seek refuge here, climbing the wall to get in, the work reveals that even in paradise there is tension and conflict.  Despite the wall separating the two, Neshat's intention to connect the woman to the crowd of men is clear; and it is reflected in the juxtaposition of the male and female characters in the triptych offered here. 

In the photographs derived from the video work, Neshat's search for different modes of looking takes on a new form, and the cinematic gaze is reworked into a still.  Illustrating the 'performance' of the film while preserving its integrity, these static images demonstrate photography's ability to make an action outlive the moment and add a layer beyond it.