Shirin Neshat

Tooba Series, 2002

Shirin Neshat’s striking 'Tooba Series' (2002) is a still from the artist’s two-channel video installation of the same name, which features an image that references the sacred tree of paradise from the Koran. Neshat’s interest is in foregrounding the struggles faced by women in traditionally male-dominated conservative societies.

Projected on two opposing screens, the video work 'Tooba' centers around the image of a woman inside a tree, within a walled garden in the midst of a desert landscape. The woman disappears into the tree as a crowd of men approach, in what appears to be a kind of pilgrimage. As with much of her work, Neshat uses the grammar of traditional narrative filmmaking (her cinematographer Darius Khondji regularly works with Hollywood filmmakers like David Fincher and the Safdie brothers) to tell an allegorical story with poetic open-endedness. The combination gives Tooba the spiritual yet earthly feeling that is present in much of her work.