Shirin Neshat

The Last Word, 2003

Shirin Neshat's work explores issues such as gender politics, cultural self-definition and religious authority in her work. The narrative of her video work 'The Last Word' (2023) is that of interrogation/condemnation of an artist and her threat to the bureaucratic establishment. Set in quite a modern and a rather Kafkaesque atmosphere, here the woman on trial is free of the Islamic Hijab. The boundary between her and the interrogator remains a long table covered with books. In this work, Neshat reveals the power of coercion exercised by government authorities on authors and intellectuals declared to be dangerous for social order.