Shirin Neshat explores the relationship between identity, power and belonging through a project that brings together a trilogy of films and a series of photographs.
The personal experience of exile meets the political and social tensions of the present, developing central themes of her work: power, gender and the construction of identity. At the heart of the story is Nasim Aghdam, the Iranian-American activist and YouTuber who, in 2018, opened fire at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California, before taking her own life.
The three films move between an immigrant neighbourhood in Brooklyn, the Wall Street financial district, and the domestic space in the Suburbs where Nasim creates her digital performances. What emerges is a fragmented portrait that lays bare the contradictions of the American Dream. It confronts America’s role as a global superpower, its imperialist ambitions, and its responsibility for wars and conflicts around the world, and questions the power the media holds over our lives.
Conceived specifically for gallery 5, the exhibition design brings set design, video and photography into dialogue. Moving between isolation and the search for belonging, visibility and marginality, the project invites viewers to consider the tensions between individual identity and the social forces that shape it.
header: Shirin Neshat, Do U Dare!, 2025. Film still. Courtesy of the artist, Gladstone, and Lia Rumma Gallery, Milan/Naples.
Shirin Neshat explores the relationship between identity, power and belonging through a project that brings together a trilogy of films and a series of photographs.
The personal experience of exile meets the political and social tensions of the present, developing central themes of her work: power, gender and the construction of identity. At the heart of the story is Nasim Aghdam, the Iranian-American activist and YouTuber who, in 2018, opened fire at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California, before taking her own life.
The three films move between an immigrant neighbourhood in Brooklyn, the Wall Street financial district, and the domestic space in the Suburbs where Nasim creates her digital performances. What emerges is a fragmented portrait that lays bare the contradictions of the American Dream. It confronts America’s role as a global superpower, its imperialist ambitions, and its responsibility for wars and conflicts around the world, and questions the power the media holds over our lives.
Conceived specifically for gallery 5, the exhibition design brings set design, video and photography into dialogue. Moving between isolation and the search for belonging, visibility and marginality, the project invites viewers to consider the tensions between individual identity and the social forces that shape it.
header: Shirin Neshat, Do U Dare!, 2025. Film still. Courtesy of the artist, Gladstone, and Lia Rumma Gallery, Milan/Naples.