Newcomb Art Museum - Sayed, from "Our House is on Fire"

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Image of Sayed, from "Our House is on Fire"

Sayed, from "Our House is on Fire"
Photograph

2013
26 x 17.5 in. (66.04 x 44.45 cm)

Shirin Neshat Artist

Object Type: Photograph

Medium and Support: digital pigment photograph on paper

Credit Line: Gift of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

Accession Number: 2016.2

Web Notes

Shirin Neshat’s Our House Is on Fire takes on the emotional aftermath of the Arab Spring in Cairo and
investigates the universal experiences of pain and mourning, as it was experienced by residents she
encountered in the city’s streets.
In these portraits, personal histories become intertwined with Egypt’s political and social upheaval. The poem
A Cry by revolutionary poet Mehdi Akhavan Sales, is inscribed across the faces of Neshat’s elderly subjects in
Persian calligraphy. The gazes of Sayed and Ghada directly meet the viewer.
In 2008, the museum presented a solo exhibition of Neshat’s work, Women Without Men, as part of the
inaugural edition of the citywide Prospect 1 art triennial.

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