The single channel film 'Sarah' is the third film in a trilogy of film installations titled Dreamers which explore the world of women’s dreams. According to Neshat, Sarah is “about the unfolding journey of a woman as she recollects and breathes annihilation, as she faces residues of destruction, violence, genocide, and mortality in a state of dream. Sarah’s anxieties and fears at last force her to plunge into imagining her own death.” While not restricted to any particular time or place, the work is intended to reference a collective sense of anxiety and fear, part of the global experience in a world fraught with conflict.

Neshat says: “In my opinion, rational interpretations of dreams never seem to properly capture their true meanings and significance within human psyche. So Sarah is an effort to make sense of the more subliminal emotional and psychic universe that lives deep inside of us, but are difficult to explain through words.

“I have been haunted by the power of dreams for years” says Neshat, “I am fascinated by how in a state of dream, the boundaries in between madness and sanity, reality and fiction, conscious and subconscious are blurred and broken”. Dreamers, her 2016 solo exhibition at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg, was based on aspects of the artist’s own dreams and featured 'Roja' and 'Sarah', the second and third films in a trilogy of film installations, which began with 'Illusions' and 'Mirrors' in 2013. Roja’s character and dilemma in many ways resembles hers: the fear of the ‘stranger’ and the ‘strange land,’ and desire for a reunion with ‘home’ with ‘mother,’ with the ‘motherland’ that seems welcoming at first but becomes terrifying and demonic in the end. Themes of ‘flight’ and ‘levitation’, implying freedom and ecstasy, is a significant aspect of the 'Roja' video that is a recurring theme in Neshat’s work.

Shirin Neshat’s work explores issues such as gender politics, cultural self-definition and religious authority in her work. Largely using female imagery, she examines political and societal change in Iran. For the artist, Iranian women embody this political transformation, so that “by studying a woman, you can read the structure and the ideology of the country”. Neshat occupies an influential and highly respected position in the international contemporary art world, not only for her formidable artistic talent but also for her long history as a writer and cultural worker. Her socially-based practice uncovers hidden histories and engages with marginalised lived experiences; constructing expanding visual archives which claim legitimate, visible spaces for her subjects. By proposing these different modes and perspectives of representation, Neshat’s works serve as prime examples of the nexus of art and social activism.

Offerings (SN376) and Offerings (SN379) form part of a larger, limited edition series of the same title. The concept is centred around the theme of wine as a catalyst for social sharing, a life force that should be “enjoyed during our brief time on earth”, in the words of the 11th-century Persian poet Omar Khayyam whose poem is inscribed as calligraphy over the surfaces of female faces, hands and bodies. Neshat's iconic poetic visual language creates contrasts between the softness of the skin and the graphic nature of the text.

Neshat’s 'Offerings' series stem from a wine label she designed in 2019 for the Ornellaia Wine Estate. The concept is centered around the theme of wine as a catalyst for social sharing, a life force that should be “enjoyed during our brief time on earth”, in the words of the 11th-century Persian poet Omar Khayyam whose poem is inscribed as calligraphy over the surfaces of female faces, hands and bodies. Neshat's iconic poetic visual language creates contrasts between the softness of the skin and the graphic nature of the text.

Offerings (SN376) and Offerings (SN379) form part of a larger, limited edition series of the same title. The concept is centred around the theme of wine as a catalyst for social sharing, a life force that should be “enjoyed during our brief time on earth”, in the words of the 11th-century Persian poet Omar Khayyam whose poem is inscribed as calligraphy over the surfaces of female faces, hands and bodies. Neshat's iconic poetic visual language creates contrasts between the softness of the skin and the graphic nature of the text.

Offerings (SN376) and Offerings (SN379) form part of a larger, limited edition series of the same title. The concept is centred around the theme of wine as a catalyst for social sharing, a life force that should be “enjoyed during our brief time on earth”, in the words of the 11th-century Persian poet Omar Khayyam whose poem is inscribed as calligraphy over the surfaces of female faces, hands and bodies. Neshat's iconic poetic visual language creates contrasts between the softness of the skin and the graphic nature of the text.