• Free Lesson Sample
• Share Your Story to be a Podcast Guest
• Untitled, 1996 by Shirin Neshat
• “Illusions & Mirrors” trailer
• Turbulent by Shirin Neshat
• Rapture, 1999 by Shirin Neshat (excerpt)
• Shirin Neshat: “I Will Greet the Sun Again” at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
• Art This Week-At The Modern-Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again
• More Art by Shirin Neshat
• Shirin Neshat Women of Allah Translations (PDF)
• Art Appreciation Worksheet Bundle (for the I am character poem)
• SPARK: 5 Art Criticism Steps for Inspired Art Connections and Conversations
• https://members.artclasscurator.com/courses/shirin-neshat-rebellious-silence/ (for members)
• I am character poem for members — https://members.artclasscurator.com/courses/art-worksheets-poetry/
• Be a Podcast Guest: Submit a Voice Memo of Your Art Story (Scroll to the bottom of the page to submit your story.)

Cindy Ingram: Hello and welcome to The Art Class Curator Podcast. I am Cindy Ingram, your host and the founder of Art Class Curator, and The Curated Connections Library. We’re here to talk about teaching art with purpose and inspiration from the daily delights of creativity to the messy mishaps that come with being a teacher. Whether you’re driving home from school or cleaning up your classroom for the 15th time today, take a second, take a deep breath, relax those shoulders, and let’s get started.

Hello everybody, it’s Cindy Ingram from Art Class Curator. Before we get into our episode, I want to invite you to the Curated Connections Experience this summer. Join me and your fellow art teachers for our 2021 Summer Art Teacher Workshops. We have one virtual and one in person. You can learn exciting and engaging teaching strategies, spend quality time with art, spark your own personal art connections, and inspire your teaching. You’ll get to spend quality time with your peers and regain the power, and excitement of art education before heading into the new school year. You can go to artclasscurator.com/workshop2021 to learn more and we’ll see you there.

Hello everybody, this is Cindy Ingram from The Art Class Curator Podcast. I am back for another curated conversation—that’s what we’re going to call this type of episode. I am here with Jennifer Easterling who is another of the wonderful Art Class Curator staff. Jennifer works with all of our education and curriculum, writing lessons for our membership, The Curated Connections Library, and also, our curriculums. I am so excited to welcome you back to the podcast, Jennifer. Welcome.

Jennifer Easterling: Thank you. I’m glad to be here. 

Cindy Ingram: We had our first of these types of podcast episodes last month with Madalyn Gregory where we talked about Death and Life by Gustav Klimt. If you haven’t listened to that episode, I encourage you to go back. We did a two-parter for that where we talked about work of art. The impetus for this type of conversation is we pick a work of art, one that was meaningful to the person that I am interviewing, then we just talk about it. We don’t really have an outline going in. We’ve had a little bit of conversation about what we might want to talk about but we really haven’t outlined this.

The structure that we’re using for this conversation is called SPARK, which if you have been following Art Class Curator for a while, you know we had the SPARK Hybrid Learning Curriculum, but we have an art criticism model called SPARK. You can get a download for that at artclasscurator.com/spark. Basically, it is See, Perceive, Ask and Answer, Reflect, and Know. We’re going through each step in a loose way—we never really follow it fully, finish one step before moving to the other—but we’re really going to talk about what moves us about the artwork, what we know, what we think, what it teaches us about ourselves and about life, then we’ll also talk about how to teach this one in the classroom because the artwork that Jennifer has chosen today is in the membership and she has also used it in her classroom. Jennifer, can you share with us which artwork that you chose for this conversation?

Jennifer Easterling: Yes, definitely. I chose Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence. This artwork has just stuck with me ever since I came across it when I was looking at the Art History AP 250 for the AP class. They have to know 250 artworks to take that AP test and this one just really stuck with me. I was so excited to find out that this one, along with a whole bunch of others, were coming to Fort Worth so I could actually see it in person and live. After researching and studying, to get to go see it, it inspired me and made me think about art in whole new ways. Some of it, really thought provoking. 

Cindy Ingram: Yes. For those of you who are listening—obviously, you’re listening because it’s a podcast—but if you want to look at the artwork, we will put the artwork in the show notes. If you head over to artclasscurator.com/65, you will find the image there to look at. But let’s describe the image. For those of you driving, please don’t go look at it while you’re driving, wait until you’re not driving, but can you describe the artwork for the listeners?

Jennifer Easterling: In this artwork, you have a woman who is wrapped in dark cloth and it’s got a very light background. You see her stunning eyes, they’re just very piercing staring right back at you. They really looked into my soul whenever I started looking at this artwork. The more you look at it, the more you start to see. She actually has writing across her face. If you look closer, it’s Farsi. I, unfortunately, cannot read Farsi so I had to go look for some translations. It’s actually a poem written by a female poetry writer and the words translate to, “O, you martyr hold my hands with your hands cut from earthly means. Hold my hands, I am your poet, with an inflicted body, I’ve come to be with you and on the promised day, we shall rise again.”

The more you look at it, the more you start to see. She’s actually holding a rifle. She’s holding it straight up but it’s splitting her face vertically, so you’ve got the shadows contrasting from the light to the dark. You have all of these different imagery of all these things being blended together into this one image. The more you look, the more you see. That’s what I just found absolutely fascinating about it.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah, I agree. Especially the eyes in this one too, I cannot stop looking at her eyes. They are so big and haunting. I noticed that too. We both got to see this exhibit of Shirin Neshat at the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum and I noticed that– is this her?

Jennifer Easterling: Yes, she was the model for her photographs.

Cindy Ingram: So she’s in most of a lot of her early photographs and in some of her videos as well. Her eyes are just a very prominent feature. You talked about when you first discovered it and what your first reaction was to it. When you got to see it at the museum last week, what was your reaction when you entered that space? 

Jennifer Easterling: There was a lot of overwhelming feeling, just, “Wow, this is it.” I always get those feelings whenever I’ve written about something and looked at it on a computer screen or in a book for so long, then I finally get to go see it in person, it changes. It’s the experience with the museum, just being in a different space, but then all of the other artworks around it, you can see how they play off of each other. I knew that this one artwork, this one photograph was a part of an entire series. I didn’t realize how extensive that series was and how one series led into another, led into another, led into another. I couldn’t believe how it took up the entire three-fourths of the top level of the Fort Worth Modern. I just kept going and going, and there were more photographs.

Cindy Ingram: I love that about seeing a work for the first time that you know so well from the computer, from books, it’s always like seeing an old friend but also someone you’ve never met before at the same time, or I guess it’s just like we met first, you and I, on the computer. We didn’t meet until, I don’t know, two years after–

Jennifer Easterling: No, wait, we met at TAEA after. Because I attended one of your workshops and I came up and met you afterwards. 

Cindy Ingram: Did you? I don’t remember that. Okay, you weren’t Jennifer Easterling then to me, you weren’t like the person who worked for Art Class Curator, you were just somebody else, or had you already started working?

Jennifer Easterling: No. I hadn’t.

Cindy Ingram: All right. 

Jennifer Easterling: I was a member, then I came up to you afterwards and I was like, “Oh, I’m a member. I love you. Here’s my number, you should call me sometime.”

Cindy Ingram: That’s hilarious. I do not remember that at all but I also get very overwhelmed at events like that. I’m not surprised that I don’t remember but that’s funny. I can’t use that example, but someone else you meet in a group online or something, you meet them in person, you feel like you really know them but it’s also like you’re seeing their body language, then you’re seeing how they walk, and you’re seeing their expressions in a new way. It just gives you more information about that person. It feels that way with the work of art. It’s really fun.

Jennifer Easterling: Definitely. It changes the whole perspective of the artwork.

Cindy Ingram: The size.

Jennifer Easterling: Yeah, the size is definitely one that blows me away every time. They’re never the size that I have in my head.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. I think what surprised me about this one and just the first few rooms of the exhibit was I think I never looked close enough to see that the writing wasn’t written on the person, then photographed. It was added to the photograph after. That was really surprising to me. It added a different layer of texture to it that I wasn’t really expecting. But now that I’m looking at it on the screen, I’m like, “Oh yeah, it’s definitely written on top.” But for some reason, I didn’t make that connection until I was there in person.

Jennifer Easterling: There’s a really cool photo that I came across whenever I was doing the research and it’s of her writing, like actually doing the writing and the drawings on the photographs after they’re printed. But what struck me is how big they are. I’m thinking it’s just an 8×10 photograph but they’re not. They’re huge and to see that perspective of her drawing on them—because you can see she’s painting and it’s much more than just writing on there, there’s more artistic thought to it—this one, it’s pretty straightforward across and of course, she doesn’t write across the eyes.

She leaves that blank so they really stand out but in some of her other works, the size changes according to the shadows and where they are on the body. Some of them she writes are really large. Another one she writes is really small. Other ones, she layers the writing and the text to create shadows, and form on top of the photographs. There’s definitely a lot more to it than just writing something on there which is really fascinating.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. There was a room with photographs of people from Egypt and it had the writing over their faces. I think the exhibit was chronological, so this stuff was her early work at the beginning. This one we’re talking about, Rebellious Silence, is one of her earlier works. The Egyptian ones were later on and, like you said, the writing was much smaller and it was layered. There was some dark writing and light writing. But some of the people were crying, did you notice that? But she wrote around the tears and left the tears.

Jennifer Easterling: That tear just popped out. The same thing she does, like a lot with the eyes, she’ll write around the eyes so that those eyes—whoever it is, whether it’s her or somebody else—they just really jump out and they would capture me. I found myself just being drawn into that person and their story. It made me wonder who they were. I was reading a little bit of tag or trying to read as many tags as I could but a lot of them didn’t have much beyond their name, like the person’s name. She photographed them because of their story but it didn’t really go into what the stories were. So then in my mind, I’m starting to create all this narrative of who this person was, what they went through, and why they were crying or what would spark those tears.

Then it was connecting back to me that everybody had a story to tell. Are we spending time diving into that story? Are we so absorbed in our own world we don’t think about other people’s stories? My mind was just flying. I was so exhausted after the exhibit. I think I spent three hours just in this one exhibit and I never do that. I’m usually running through and, “Okay, I’m going to look real fast then move out,” I’m like, “Nope, I’m just going to take my time and go from each piece as I feel like it.” I spent three hours but I was just totally exhausted. Then it dawned on me, there was so much emotion that I was seeing and feeling through all this and I’m like, “Oh, this is amazing, I have to do this more.”

Cindy Ingram: I know. I felt the same way. Since we’re talking about your first reactions, my first reaction was one day, getting over the initial surprise of it’s different than what I imagined but the thing that I felt most striking was realizing that I don’t know this language, I mean that’s obvious. Sometimes, the text was translated but most of the time it wasn’t. I couldn’t help but wonder what this experience would have been like if these were my own culture and these were a language that I knew, and how drastically different the experience would have been for me.

It was this battle back and forth between feeling like I want to be in, I want to be let in, I want to understand, I want to learn, and I want to learn about these people, and who they are but also realizing that I never fully can. That’s true for any. Even my own children, I never fully can understand what’s going on in their heads. 

Jennifer Easterling: While I was there, I came across this group of ladies and they were a little bit older in age. There were four of them and they were looking at the artwork. I always listen. I’m curious as to what they’re talking about. There weren’t very many people there and I heard this one lady start talking about how they were in Iran whenever the revelation happened and her son was there. They had a whole different perspective on this.

I’m looking at these artworks because she was there, she experienced some of the things. Even though—and I’m not trying to assume anything but I don’t think she was Iranian—she looked to be American but she had this whole different experience from being in that place at that time, so she has this different shared experience than you or I have because we weren’t there. I really wanted to go up and ask her more about it but try not to have her too much. But yeah, that was really interesting.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah, totally.

Jennifer Easterling: Some other things that I noticed looking at the photographs up close and in person was all the texture in the cloth, the texture and the contrast in the backgrounds of each photograph where it’s just lost whenever it’s on the screen because it’s not near as big, but whenever it’s printed large and such high quality, you really get to see all the nuances of the photograph and how well planned they were. These weren’t just a quick snapshot and move on, you can see just the texture and the way that she would pull the cloth, and you see the cloth move, I was blown away by that because I do have a little bit of knowledge of photography and all that. So looking at how each little piece was planned, I thought it was really, really fascinating. 

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. Speaking of the cloth, she’s wearing a hijab and it’s completely fully covering her face, then it’s just draped. You don’t really see her body underneath it. You can see a little bit of a shoulder but that’s a really interesting use of positive and negative space because the background is just white but you start to think artistically, it’s just a black space. But there’s so much in that black space, so much that the hijab symbolically represents. There’s so much about wondering who is underneath that, who they are, and what are their hopes, and dreams, who is this woman, her history, her future, her feelings, and all of that feels like it’s wrapped up in that just solid black cloth.

Jennifer Easterling: And she talks about that. Most of them have the black cloth against this really light background, so you’ve got that strong contrast. But in one or two of them, it’s actually white cloth. It talks about the symbolism of white representing death and she’s using the cloth in the photograph almost as a shield. There’s one that’s really powerful of her and her son together. He’s sitting in her lap and there’s still a rifle, a gun next to him but she’s got this cloth she wrapped around and you just see their faces. It’s talking about using that as a shield, a shield against death, a shield against everything else that’s going on.

I thought that it was really fascinating. It had more meaning than just contrast or something tied to a culture. It was that protectiveness. As a mom, I really started to connect with her on that too, wanting to shield her child from the outside world or anything else that might be going on. That one struck me too

Cindy Ingram: Oh yeah, there were many that really made me think about motherhood in different ways. There was one in particular that she was fully covered with, I don’t think it was a burka. I think I could see her face. I don’t remember. Actually, I’m going to go look to be sure. But she was fully covered, then her son was nude and he was probably, I don’t know, seven or eight or maybe, younger, maybe five. He was fully decorated in little like Persian patterns and that sort of–

Jennifer Easterling: She is completely covered except for exposed arm extended to her son who is covered with the markings of his heritage. Decorative designs that can be considered Persian, Iranian, Middle Eastern, and Islamic. Compared with his mother who is hidden, the boy seems to have full rights to his heritage, able to express them on his body without prohibition even at a very early age. The suggestion here is that a male by the mere virtue of his sex is born with rights to expressions denied to females. Even though the woman is the boy’s guide and mother, it is clear that she occupies a different social stratum when she is within the Islamic Republic.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah.

Jennifer Easterling: It just blows you away.

Cindy Ingram: It does and it’s so funny, like I didn’t really even need that label to fully get this one. It was so powerful and impactful to see that difference. So I went back and looked at the photo just to make sure and yeah, you don’t see her face at all. You don’t even see her eyes. 

Jennifer Easterling: No, you don’t. 

Cindy Ingram: She’s completely covered head to toe with just her arm coming out. 

Jennifer Easterling: This was another one that I thought was really interesting with the texture layered behind because you’ve got the dark black cloth. It’s solid but then you’ve got a white background but if you look closely, it’s lace. There’s all this texture behind it but it doesn’t look like it has the same cultural patterns that it does on her son. I know in some of it, she talks about blending of cultures because she was based in New York for a while, I think for the majority. I think she’s still there living and working.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. There was another one that was a mother hoodie that I really connected with. That one we just talked about, if you’re curious, it’s called Untitled, 1996. Any artwork that we mention from the exhibit, we will include the titles and links to images in the show notes. Don’t worry about that. I took a lot of pictures of the exhibit and I’m sure Jenn did too.

The other one that I thought that I really liked was called Bonding, 1995. This time, her hands were the ones with the patterns and decorations on them. They were cupped in almost like a heart shape and her son’s hands were—I think it was her son—in her hands and his hands this time didn’t have the decoration. I went to a lot of places with that one. We’re not even talking about Rebellious Silence anymore but we’ll go back to it. We’ll be in and out.

Jennifer Easterling: It’s all part of those theories of these Women of Allah. You see how interconnected they are and that’s what made this Rebellious Silence more impactful to me whenever I was seeing them all together instead of just on its own. It’s powerful on its own but then you see all of them and it just hits you in different ways like, “Wow, here’s a woman really using her voice to speak out about all kinds of things without physically being there speaking.” 

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. What was really interesting to me as I was watching my own reactions at the same time as experiencing the artwork, one of the reactions that I had is I found myself—because women’s rights are such a really important issue for me, it’s something that I feel really passionate about—I found myself viewing a lot of these through stories that I know of how women’s rights are non-existent in certain parts of the world or the fact that they have to cover up and all this stuff. I was coming in with this attitude of “this is all negative”, like the women’s roles are all negative.

Then I would read the label and it would be talking about love, connection to their faith. The women’s rights stuff was there and it was talked about but there was also this love for their culture, love for their religion, and love for their traditions. I saw that and it really reminded me that in this world now, things are not black and white even though we’re looking at artworks that are black and white. Just the layers of all of those things together are so seen in these artworks and it really opened my eyes to this whole topic of–what is the topic? I don’t know. What do I call that topic? Suddenly, I have no idea.

Jennifer Easterling: Of gender, of race, of culture?

Cindy Ingram: Muslim women?

Jennifer Easterling: Power of voice curriculum? 

Cindy Ingram: Anyway, it opened my eyes to the issue of Muslim women’s rights, that it’s not so easy. It’s not so clear what’s right and what’s wrong.

Jennifer Easterling: Yeah. I know in some of the labels, it talks about the contrast, which I thought had so many different meanings because you’re looking at the black and white contrast of just the photograph and those stark value changes. But then she’s also talking about the contrast of the imagery where you have a woman who is supposed to be the homemaker, lovely, and soft, you have these all stereotypical things that a woman is supposed to fit into but yet, here she is holding a gun. That contrast, then you have the hard steel versus the softness of the cloth. You’ve got that contrast. Are you supposed to be seeing these things all together? Just lots and lots of contrast and clashes between many things, multi-layered, multifaceted all throughout this.

Again, the more you look, the more you see and the more you connect with as a woman and connect back to your own thoughts, culture, and experiences and what are things that are contrasting, and clashing in my life and my experiences. You can relate to her on many different levels, of many different things. It may not be specifically a gun but how many times are things happening simultaneously in different cultures? Not necessarily simultaneously but you see gun issues there, which they’re always being faced here in the US and there are always these conversations happening. Whenever you look at artwork from different parts of the world, it’s interesting to see that conversations don’t always change. They might look a little bit different but so much of it, it’s the same.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. Let’s talk about the issue of the guns in the artwork a little bit more, what they could symbolize and also, how she uses them for meaning. Because this one that we’re talking about Rebellious Silence has the rifle coming straight up from below. It’s basically just the barrel of the gun and it goes across her face. There’s another one in the exhibit where the woman is pointing the gun at the viewer, which obviously we didn’t choose that one for the members to show kids because that’s a little taking. It’s probably a little too far. I think we’d get some parent complaints on that one. What are you thinking about the symbolism of the gun and why she included the gun in the artwork?

Jennifer Easterling: I had many thoughts before, as you know. Again, this is my American lens on things, and again, we’re in Texas, so then there’s a whole different lens of being in Texas with that. But in America, it’s this whole idea of the right to keep and bear arms, so is this one way of her hanging on to her rights? Or is it a whole other thing of standing up against something or are you trying to fight for something? If you look at the title, the Rebellious Silence, are you rebelling against silence? Is this how you’re rebelling by holding that and carrying that? Or is your voice not working, so now you have to resort to other things?

In my head, I start to see all these different narratives but then whenever I went to the show and read the different titles, it was talking that this became a way, like they were picking up arms to fight with brothers for their country and their culture. It was more back to that contrast of they’re maybe not supposed to but here they are trying to stand up and fight together to keep their culture and not lose that. I thought that was really, really, fascinating.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. I think that my interpretation of the gun actually changed from when I saw it before to when I saw it in person. Mainly because of that issue I already talked about how I went in with women’s rights plastered on my forehead, I was like, “This is what this is about.” Then I got there and I was like, “No, this is not what this is about. It’s partially what this is about.” But yeah, once I was there and in the space, I realized that these were women that were fighting for their culture. It was a protection of their culture. It was that than fighting against. But I also think it can be both. There’s this thing going around, I hear it all the time now these days from coaches and people on the internet called both/and, have you heard that?

Jennifer Easterling: I think so.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah, it’s basically a lot of people going into the world thinking about either or black or white. I don’t know who coined both/and but it’s embracing the both/and is seeing that you can be exhausted and you can also be energized at the same time. You can be both. You can be either not one or another. I think that in this exhibit, the whole way through, I was seeing that play out. You can be oppressed but also you can fight for your call, like you can do both and you can be both.

Jennifer Easterling: And you can be a mother and you can be a homemaker but you can still stand up and fight for whatever. Yeah, I definitely see that. The world is not always black and white. You think about how many grays there are in the world itself. There’s not always a right and a wrong answer because everybody has their own opinion, their own different take, and experience. All that has to play in. 

Cindi Ingram: Yeah, I get caught in that black or white thinking all the time and I constantly have to remind myself. I just felt like this whole exhibit was like, “Cindy, look at this, another example of why you need to stop doing that.” That was an important lesson that I got.

Jennifer Easterling: I pulled the card up and it says, “The woman in the photo is vigilant and ready for whatever threat is coming her way.” That could be anything and that could be taken in so many different ways, and you apply that to your own life. This is readiness for whatever might be coming. Is it the hardness of the day, just getting the kids ready for school, getting to work, and running through your day? Are you ready for that? Or is there something else that you have to really fight for? Your culture, your freedom, your experiences, your family, whatever. This idea of being ready. 

Cindy Ingram: Yeah, she’s armored up, she’s got her weapon, and that made me think that’s what the gun means to her but then there’s the element of now, the gun is separating her from the viewer. It’s this barrier between the two people, so that’s impacting our relationship with her too.

Jennifer Easterling: Yeah, for sure. Then you see the light against the dark, how does that play in? Is it right? Is it wrong? That plays in. Then her eyes just keep drawing me back in and you start thinking, “Okay, what’s her story? What has she been through? Why would she be holding this gun? What is she trying to fight for or separate us from?” All of that.

The cliche of, “The eyes are the window to the soul,” but so many of our artworks concentrate on that. Eyes are what make us unique. Everybody has their own eyes. Physically, yes, they’re different, they are unique, and part of our individual makeup but it’s how we see and perceive things too. Everybody has their own take on how they’re seeing things. There are so many layers that you could dive into this.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. Madalyn and I in our last conversation talked a lot about eyes because that was a big thing in the artwork that we looked at. But I think you can never get enough really dramatic eyes in an artwork because they’re just drawing me in. If I just sit there and let myself stare into her eyes, I feel like I would just completely lose myself. I’m trying it and I’m not going to be able to talk because they’re so good. She just has beautiful eyes. 

Jennifer Easterling: It connects us back to her. The more I look at her, the more I feel connected with her as a person, as an artist, as a model, as an activist, as whatever else.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. There’s something about just looking into somebody’s eyes. It’s an incredibly vulnerable thing. As I’m staring at your eyes on my computer screen, I’m not looking at you, but I just feel really vulnerable about it.

Jennifer Easterling: Like she’s my soul. 

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. She is seeing something in me that maybe I don’t know and I’m seeing something in her that maybe she doesn’t know, like the secrets that we keep and hide away, I feel like it’s there.

Jennifer Easterling: But yet feeling connected too like she’s seen into my soul and I’m seeing into her soul. But that idea of really connecting with somebody and talking about culture, eye contact can be really important. That helps you understand somebody and it shows that you’re paying attention or whatever else. But yeah, whenever you get this photograph and she’s just staring into my soul like, “What do you want to know? I can tell you everything or maybe you already know it.”

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. That’s what these activities where you think about your own life in reflection in response to an artwork I think are so powerful because it isn’t just about her. It’s about us, too, looking at her. Especially when she’s looking straight at us, the artwork then becomes about us, like what is our role in this artwork? 

Jennifer Easterling: For sure.

Cindy Ingram: What do you think Shirin Neshat wanted from us looking at this? 

Jennifer Easterling: It’s a really good question. The more I look at it, again, I just feel this connection to her and I feel curious about her, her culture, and what she’s going through or has been through. I became more curious about the writing and what it means to her, what it means to somebody who can read Farsi but then you read the translation if you have that and you start to see, you’re able to understand maybe a little bit more. But I think a lot of it is just this is one powerful way that she was able to use her voice and really reach a lot of people in a lot of different ways, especially now it’s being included in the AP 250.

Kids all over are seeing this and being able to connect with her, her voice, and the message that she wants to get out there. I think part of it is fighting for your culture, your freedom, whatever it is, you fight for whatever threat may be coming your way, whatever that might look like but empowering people, empowering women. Don’t be afraid of whatever it is that’s coming your way. You have it. For it to make it into high schools, that’s pretty powerful. Her voice is pretty strong. That’s amazing.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. I think that too, part of me, I thought about that question I asked of you for myself too. I’m thinking that one of the things that she wants from us is—and again, this is conjecture, she didn’t tell me this but that’s what art interpretation is—that I think she is wanting to educate us as two white women who go in with a certain stereotypes of what we think that life is like for Muslim women in Iran. She’s challenging us, I think, to question our stereotypes. I don’t think she’s educating us but she’s challenging us to educate ourselves.

Jennifer Easterling: Yeah, for sure. I know I’ve done a lot more research on things now since I’ve looked at it because it created all this curiosity in me. I had all these questions and narratives, so that sent me to go research and find out more about history, culture, and all that, and what might have spurred these images. 

Cindy Ingram: I hear that a lot too from, just say like in relation to Black Lives Matter and things like that, I’ve heard certain black people say, “Stop asking us to educate you.” It’s like, “It’s not our job to educate you, it’s your job to educate yourself.” I feel that connection with this as well.

Let’s talk about the poem in the text. Do you want us to read the translation again? Because I’m sure, people have forgotten by now.

Jennifer Easterling: Yes. She only used female poets in all of it. Every photograph she did in the Women of Allah series has a poem to go with it. The poem is by Tahereh Saffarzadeh. It’s called Allegiance with Wakefulness. The poem is,

“O you martyr

hold my hands

with your hands

cut from earthly means.

Hold my hands,

I am your poet,

with an inflicted body,

I’ve come to be with you

and on the promised day

we shall rise again.”

Cindy Ingram: Okay, what’s your interpretation? We’ve never really done poetry interpretation before together. This is fun. 

Jennifer Easterling: Yes. Whenever I’m reading it, I start seeing a bunch of the other artworks and not so much this one in particular. But this whole idea of a martyr is really interesting. Is she the martyr in the artwork or is this talking about a different martyr and she’s going to fight for their cause or why they were the martyr? Then all the imagery with, “Hold my hands with your hands,” I think of the other artworks where there are hands in them—she’s holding the hands of her child or the hands are holding the gun or near the gun, there’s another one where her hand is just barely touching her lips—those images come to mind whenever I’m hearing about all of this or reading about the hands and holding my hands. But this idea of we will rise again or we will live to fight another day or we’ll rise from the ashes, all those images come to mind whenever I read that.

Cindy Ingram: Do you know what I think is happening in the poem? I think that it is from the perspective of Allah, of God. God is the one speaking those words. He’s saying—he/she, I don’t like to say he because we don’t know—it’s saying, “You’re the martyr, I’m with you, hold my hands.” It says, “With your hands cut from earthly means,” that made me think that “your” is the person on my end. It says, “I am your poet,” then you have this body, you’re of this earth but I’m here with you and I’m protecting you. Then I’ve got you back basically.

Jennifer Easterling: Then, “We shall rise again.” Like in Christianity where it always talks about the saints will rise again and come back after when Jesus comes back again, that’s something that was coming to mind.

Cindy Ingram: But I think you’re onto something there. I think that it’s true, I mean Muslim or Islam comes from Christianity. It is an extension of Christianity. They believed in the things leading up to, then Prophet Muhammad was like the next prophet. They’re still the same. It’s the same God, like the same God as Judaism, the same God as Christianity.

Jennifer Easterling: Yeah. Again, not knowing Islam but this idea of are the saints going to rise again? Do they have saints in Islam? 

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. Questions to be answered. I think it’s important to note we are not Muslim and we’re talking about an artwork that is very much connected with its religion, so we have to be really careful. But also, I don’t think we need to be afraid to make those connections to things that we know, then we can find meaning and we can work it out, and we can figure it out. It’s a little scary because you don’t want to offend anybody or do something wrong but also, you’re not going to learn until you’ve done that.

Jennifer Easterling: I think it’s important to have conversations around things you don’t know because that’s how you learn or it generates new questions that drives you to go find the answers just out of curiosity. I think it’s good to be able to have conversations around things you don’t know and don’t understand.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. I think that’s really important to teach our kids. There’s a lot of people in this world who are quick to shut you down. They’re quick to correct you or to comment that you’re getting it wrong. But if you’re coming from a place of “I want to learn and I want to do better, I’m going to do my best to do that,” you can’t do anything more than that. If you’re coming in and saying, “This is what I know and this is what’s right,” if you’re coming with that attitude, yeah, correct me. Call me out on that. But if I’m trying to learn and I’m working through it, I think that’s really important.

Jennifer Easterling: This is where the beauty of looking at art from other cultures is. So much of it, we can connect to it ourselves in different ways and drive us to learn more about the culture, different beliefs, and different ways of being. That’s why I love looking at art from all around the world because it helps me know more about them or about that. It helps expand my knowledge so I can better connect with people.

Cindy Ingram: For sure. Yeah, I think the writing is really meaningful when I look at it, especially the lines of the “Cut from earthly means” and the “With an inflicted body”, because our bodies take such a beating in our life but they’re like with us, taking care of us and they’re protecting us. Most of us are incredibly mean to our bodies—we don’t get enough sleep or we don’t eat the right foods, or whatever. I don’t want to shame anything—but our bodies, through all of that, through the abuse that we go through on a day-to-day basis—self-inflicted or other people, whatever—that our bodies are here for us and keep us alive every single day, every single moment of our lives. Your body’s got your back. I feel like, too, this poem also could be like you could go a whole different way and be like this poem is like your body’s message to you. I just now thought about that but it’s like, “I’m here with you, I’m protecting you. You’re safe if you’re with me.” I feel like it’s a little love letter.

Jennifer Easterling: Yeah, I’ve come to be with you. You are with your body, you only get one, and it’s with you all your life.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah.

Jennifer Easterling: Fascinating.

Cindy Ingram: Indeed. That’s my own personal journey coming through my own personal connections because that is something that I do spend a lot of time thinking about and processing, how my body is here to protect, “You’re here to make me live the best life.” 

Jennifer Easterling: Yeah, for sure. Going back to the writing on it, it’s so beautiful. That’s what I’ve always admired about Farsi and different languages. I love to see how they’re written because it’s really, really beautiful. It’s very artistic. The way she has added all the writing itself despite being in another language, that is an art form in and of itself. It’s just incredible because I’d get lost in this different language. 

Cindy Ingram: Then I think if it were written in English, it would be far less beautiful. I guess you could write it in a certain way to where it’d be beautiful but it’s also, writing in English would then take the mystery away from me. I think even though I wish I could read it, I also like the mystery of it at the same time. 

Jennifer Easterling: Yeah.

Cindy Ingram: Also, it connects back to traditional forms in Islamic art. The written word in calligraphy is probably the number one art form of Islamic art. I think that’s a really important tie-in for her to include that in her own work, that cultural connection.

Jennifer Easterling: For sure. Again, many different layers of this, you could examine each facet and talk forever on each little thing.

Cindy Ingram: Even in her other works, it’s not just the writing but the other art forms that are prevalent in Islamic art, like the nature motifs, the patterns, the swirly lines, and all those sorts of patterns, we see that throughout her artwork too. As someone who has studied art history, I like to bring that in and make that connection.

Jennifer Easterling: For sure. Some of the other artworks, not in the Women of Allah series, but as she moved to different locations, because the Women of Allah series I think was taken in the US. I’m trying to remember but there was another one where she went back to Iran and took pictures with her family, and with that, she placed a very traditional English background where you have this garden and stuff. It’s soft but it doesn’t look like it’s from Iran. She talks about that it’s very deliberate, that it’s of more western culture. Then she is in the foreground and sometimes, it’s just her, sometimes with her sister or her niece, then there’s one with several family members.

They are in their more traditional dress from Iran. It’s that clashing of cultures but also that blending of cultures where she’s been living in the US for such a long time but yet she wants to hang on to her roots. She serves a lot of family in Iran, so she blends all of that together in different ways. I think it was the English garden, that’s what it was in the background, then she does different things with vines and stuff. I thought that was a whole different interesting take, how she’s moving from place to place.

Cindy Ingram: That series with the garden in the background, I thought was so different from stuff before. It was really fascinating to see. I went back to check because you were wondering if she was in the US when she did the Women of Allah series. I think she was. She moved to the United States in 1975 and came back in 1990. 

Jennifer Easterling: That was the first time she had been back since the Iranian Revolution. She came to the US to study with her sister in California and whenever they were in the US, the revolution broke out and it cut her off from her family for 11 years. It wasn’t until 1990 that she was able to go back and actually see her family for the first time since everything had happened. She talked about how so much of her home had changed. She didn’t even recognize it. It was just totally different.

That sent me thinking about how I grew up in a really small town but then I moved away, so anytime I go back, it’s the same but it’s not. My family is still there and I have all these memories, and all that but it’s never quite the same whenever you go back to your home. I was looking at it from other eyes, not that there’s been a revolution in my hometown but things always change. Time passes and people come, and go. It’s always changing.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. There’s a quote that I just want to call about what she said about when she came back. She came back one year after Ayatollah Khomeini’s death and it says, “It was probably one of the most shocking experiences that I’ve ever had. The difference between what I had remembered and what I was witnessing was enormous. The change was both frightening and exciting. I had never been in a country that was so ideologically based. Most noticeable, of course, was the change in people’s physical appearance and public behavior.” Is that when the women’s rights thing started to get worse because of the revolution?

Jennifer Easterling: That was my understanding. I thought this quote was interesting. This was something that she had to say about her work, she says, “It’s really about the question of people versus tyranny and people who fight power versus people who hold power.” That was found on npr.org. Whenever she’s exploring her experiences of creating art while in exile, in all the interviews that I’ve watched her give, she keeps talking about being an artist in exile and being exiled from her home, and this is how she is I guess dealing with those experiences of being in exile and how she’s facing this time in her life—exile, martyrdom, identity, Islam, women at the intersection of political tyranny and religious fanaticism, as well as the idea that good and evil exist in all of us. All of her stuff really has many, many layers and you could look at it from all different lenses, all different viewpoints, and connect with it in some way, some fashion.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. We’ve been talking for a while, I think we’re getting to a point where the podcast should end eventually. We could probably keep going for another hour. I feel like we could. But let’s wrap up, because the problem too is I just thought of the whole topic of masculinity versus femininity. I feel like that’s in all of her work too.

Jennifer Easterling: It is. Yeah, she talks about it. 

Cindy Ingram: What we need to talk about is the videos. I feel like we would be doing a huge disservice if we did not talk about the videos before we ended. I was going to have you share your personal connections but I’m going to wait because we need to talk about the videos first.

She’s a photographer but she is a filmmaker. She does both video art but then she also makes films—the line between what is a film and what is a video art, I’m not exactly sure about—but never, in an art exhibit, have I ever sat and watched every single minute of every single video installation. There were maybe four or five.

Jennifer Easterling: They were a lot more than I expected but yeah.

Cindy Ingram: Me and Madalyn, we sat and watched every single one and at the end of it, I was like, “That was really the star of the show. That was the most eye-opening, the most interesting.” I just really loved the videos.

Jennifer Easterling: Yeah. I had seen some just in my research for the lesson plan and I thought they were really powerful. But seeing them in the museum setting, especially there’s one where on the computer screen, they’re just side by side and there are two different films playing at the same time but in the museum, they had it on two completely separate screens, two sides of the room, two walls, so it totally changed the meaning of this video.

What you have to start off with, you have a man and he gets up onto a stage, and he sings. He gives a song performance in front of many other men. Whenever he’s done, they’re all clapping and giving him applause, and praise for his song. Then on the opposite wall, a woman gets up and she gives a performance but it’s a totally different feeling, and the audience is empty. She’s just performing to empty chairs. She’s singing but at the same time, it’s different. It’s more sounds I guess instead of actual lyrics. It’s beautiful, haunting, terrifying, and amazing all at the same time. You really can’t put it into words. But whenever she starts giving her performance, the men stop, they turn, and they’re just watching, and looking at her almost in shock. Whenever she ends, they just stop and stare, almost in disbelief I guess. It’s hard to say.

My interpretation of it is that all of a sudden, they’re coming in like,”What are you doing up on stage? What is that?” Anyway, it was really fascinating to see the play of the two videos, how they interacted with each other on opposite screens versus just side by side on a computer screen and of course, they’re huge, so that makes a difference too.

Cindy Ingram: In that same room, they played another video. It was a men-women thing again where there were men on one side and they were digging a hole or something, did you see that one? 

Jennifer Easterling: Yeah, there is.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. It’s in the same room.

Jennifer Easterling: They’re in this medieval city and they’re all in white shirts and the women are all in black, so you see that contrast too. They’re going around the city and doing all these things together, then as soon as the women speak up, they stop and freeze, and they’re looking at them in confusion, almost like, “Why are you speaking up?”

Cindy Ingram: The men stop and just stare at the other wall. So then, you look at the other wall and that’s when the women are doing their thing. When the women would stop, then the men would continue to do it. It was just this back and forth that was so interesting. Then ultimately, the women ended up going to a beach and getting on a boat, and sailing off into the distance. Then the men were at this medieval fortress and there were cannons. I was so worried the men were going to shoot cannons at the women but they didn’t.

Jennifer Easterling: I know right. 

Cindy Ingram: I was like, “No, don’t do that.” But then they were just watching in disbelief like, “What are they doing? Where are they going? Why are they leaving? They’re not supposed to leave.” That’s the vibe that I got. 

Jennifer Easterling: I read the card before I went in—because I never do that at museums, I just go up and look at the artwork—but this time, I purposefully read and it was talking about how the men were almost like chained to the city where they couldn’t leave. They were stuck there together where the women were free. The boats, they’re free items that take them beyond, so I thought, “Hmm, interesting.” I was viewing it through that lens after reading the card first.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. I relied more on label text than I ever have. This exhibit, it just felt really important that I read every single label. They had a lot of poems on the walls too. Those were really, really amazing, such good poems. The videos were incredible. Like Jenn said, those are online, so we’ll see if we can find links to those two that we talked about and we’ll put those in the show notes so you can check them out. They were just so good. The only one I didn’t like is the one with Natalie Portman in it because all I could think of was, “That’s Natalie Portman.”

Jennifer Easterling: Yeah.

Cindy Ingram: She took me out of it. I was like, “Why is she here? What is she doing?” Then my brain was just like, “Do they know each other? How did this happen?” I was trying to figure out how Natalie Portman ended up in it instead of focusing on the actual artwork itself.

Jennifer Easterling: I guess there’s one that has dialogue in it, one video out of all of them but the rest of them are mainly, they’re not silent—they’ve got music, sounds, and stuff—but there’s just no dialogue. You’re putting a lot of your own thoughts, feelings, emotions into the videos themselves. I found myself standing in the person’s shoes as they’re going through this video and experiencing these different things. It’s interesting whenever you take a video, then just take out all the dialogue. It totally changes your perception and your take on this.

Cindy Ingram: Yeah, I think you really do. You have all that time too because you might not spend a lot of time in front of a 2D work of art, although I do a lot, but this one, you have more time, so you’re thinking more, you’re interpreting more, then you’re looking for where you fit. The one I found that I fit most into was the one where the woman was becoming the tree.

Jennifer Easterling: Oh, yeah.

Cindy Ingram: She was hiding in the tree, then there’s this group of people coming, then she just slowly becomes the tree, then she’s not there anymore. I felt really connected with that because sometimes, I think it’s part of my anxiety that when I have anxiety, my instinct is to hide, I want to go in my closet. I want to hide on the floor, get myself in a ball. I want to close the door and turn the light off, like I don’t want to be seen. I felt like she was trying to hide in plain sight and she managed to turn herself into a tree, I don’t know, I could see that.

Jennifer Easterling: Oh, if I have that power.

Cindy Ingram: I know, wouldn’t it be so comforting? 

Jennifer Easterling: I’m just going to be a tree today.

Cindy Ingram: That made me think just like meeting you at TAEA and me, not remembering. It’s probably because I really needed to turn myself into a tree at that moment right after our session.

Jennifer Easterling: That’s all good. 

Cindy Ingram: Indeed. You went to this exhibit, you saw this Rebellious Silence as well as her whole work of art. If you could think of one key thing, personal connection that you’re going to take forward, something about your own life that you learned from this, what do you think that would be?

Jennifer Easterling: To definitely go in with open eyes, an open mind, an open concept, and just let the art speak to me however it’s going to. Try to get rid of any past things that I had read or seen and just be with the art, be with the exhibit, be with the artist in that place, in that time. I thought that was really nice because most of the time, I’ve got people with me but this time, I was by myself and I could just go and exist, and be with the art and let it speak to me in whatever way. I was able to open up a lot more and let all of this art speak to me in so many different ways, where if I’m in a rush or whatever else, that doesn’t happen. 

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. I think you learned not to take your kids to every art museum you go to.

Jennifer Easterling: Yeah. That’s for sure. As I’m finished, I’m like, “Yeah, the family would not have enjoyed this, they would have been rushing out.” Especially, if I’m in there for three hours by myself on this one floor, they would have been like, “I think we’re ready, let’s go.” But being able to just push all of the inhibitions back and just be like, “Okay, I’m just going to exist in this space with this art and let it speak to me, and learn from what is going to stick with me,” these have really stuck with me. I can tell, whenever I’m still thinking about them, days later, “Okay, that spoke to me in many different ways.”

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. I think my main lesson, my main personal connection was the existence of the both/and, the black and white thinking that I’m always having. I live in this world in my head where my head’s like, “You can’t be smart and be spiritual.” I have this thing that I do and it’s just in every area of my life I tend to do that. The only person that is being harmed from that thinking is me, I’m just making myself feel bad for no reason at all. I think that was a great lesson for me.

What’s really important, and I think we talk about this a lot at Art Class Curator, is finding the personal connections to works of art, finding what that artwork has for you personally. It’s not about going in and learning everything that you can about the artist, and learning about the way she used contrast, the way she used base. It’s deeper than that. It’s more than that. It’s how you can use that art to better yourself, use that art to create joy, to create insight, to create meaning in your life. You can’t just enjoy a work of art too but when you can find these lessons, I think that’s where–

Jennifer Easterling: It’s the personal connections. Whatever that may be, whatever way, shape or form because it’s not going to connect with everybody the same way.

Cindy Ingram: If I went back to that exhibit today, even though I just went, I don’t know, maybe a month ago, if I went back today, I would probably come out with a completely different lesson because every time is different. We just have to be open to seeing what that is and letting the art guide you to whatever you need to know.

Jennifer Easterling: I think one other thing is the stories. Everybody has a story to tell, are we willing to listen? Are we open enough to listen to those stories? That in turn will then connect us to other people. I think part of what I’ve learned with this job is all the connections in life. Every day, I’m going through and I’m seeing things interconnected, and intertwined that I’ve never seen before.

I’ll just spot something that may seem really random but in my head, I’ve connected it to all these things and people look at me like, “What are you talking about?” Like, “You don’t see the connection between all these things? It’s amazing.” I come back to the stories and now, I feel connected to these people and the stories that Neshat was trying to tell with their experiences. Even though I don’t know their full story, I feel connected to their story in some way, connected to these people and all those different things.

Cindy Ingram: That was a beautiful way to end. However, we’re not done because I do want to hear from you. You have taught this artwork in your classroom.

Jennifer Easterling:  Yes.

Cindy Ingram: I want to hear how that went. What did you do? Any insights you had from that?

Jennifer Easterling: When I taught this in my classroom, we started off with this idea, what’s going on here and what makes you say that. It’s always beautiful to watch what the kids say, see, connect with, bring out. There were a lot of really interesting conversations that we had. It’s been a little bit since we had these conversations. I don’t remember specific things but I remember having a lot of really deep conversations. I was super passionate about this. I think the kids felt it too, just learning more about it. I was excited to share it with the kids.

We talked about the woman, we talked about the writing, and we talked about what is she trying to say, where is she trying to go, looking at all those things. Then what we did with the artwork is we looked at a poem, it’s the I am… Character Poem. It talks about things like, “I am ____.” You fill in the blank. I am, I see, I feel, and I think. You’re putting in all of these different thoughts and feelings. I had the kids print off pictures of themselves, so we took selfies, printed them in black and white, then I had the kids write their I am poem on their face talking about I am whatever.

I left it really, really wide open for them and I had kids who spoke different languages, and wrote in different languages. I encouraged them to write in whatever language they wanted to, that it didn’t have to necessarily be legible. This is more for them like, “What are you? You tell me.” One specific student I remember, he struggled with this a whole lot. He just wrote this I am, it was kind of silly. I said, “That’s fine. It doesn’t have to be super serious. It can be deep and meaningful or it can be light and fun. I’m leaving it up to you.” He blew off the assignment and wrote some stuff down, and I said, “It’s okay. That’s fine. We’ll go with it.”

But then all of a sudden, he took it back maybe a few days later and he had scratched out the majority of it on his face, and rewrote the poem. It was this deep, deep meaningful, insightful poem about who he was and different things that he felt, and was going through and I was like, “Whoa.” But it also allowed me to connect with him in different ways. It gave me this insight into who he was as a person, as a student, as all the different things. It really gave me insight to who he was. I thought that was really interesting. I was able to share it with his mom and that gave her insight too so that we could better connect with him and help him in different ways so that he could be a successful student. It was a fascinating assignment because we didn’t try to copy her, we just took inspiration from her.

Cindy Ingram: I love that story because it shows in a really real way how students are capable of these sorts of really amazing art connections. You can see in that story, he was holding himself back at the beginning, he was keeping it service level, maybe, I’m projecting onto this kid but he was scared to get too vulnerable.

Jennifer Easterling: That’s exactly what was going on. Knowing this kid now and knowing more about him, that’s exactly what was going on but it wasn’t until he pushed himself. I didn’t even do it. I just gave it to him and I stood back, and I let him run with the fun thing but he took it upon himself to go back and do it again, and push all this other meaning. That, I was so proud of, but you’re like, “Okay, that gives me chills. Yes, I connected with a student and the student was able to connect with art.”

Cindy Ingram: Yeah. You gave me chills talking about it. It’s just amazing. I think that’s an amazing place to leave off. If you’re listening, I want to remind you, you can go to the show notes at artclasscurator.com/65 to get the links from this episode, look at the artworks, we have some pictures that we took at the exhibit that I’m sure we can throw in there as well. Then also, the I am… Character poem worksheet that Jenn just referenced, we have that in the store on our website artclasscurator.com/worksheets. We’ll also put a link to that in the show notes.

Also, if you’re a member of The Curated Connections Library, we do have an entire lesson on Shirin Neshat’s Rebellious Silence in there which includes a lesson plan, discussion, questions, engaging activities, links to YouTube videos, and TED Talks that Shirin Neshat has done—I think there’s a TED Talk in there—or videos, interviews, and things, project ideas, worksheet templates, all the works for that work of art. If you’re inspired to talk about this with your students, we’ve got that in the membership. We’ll also link that in the show notes for our members.

This was a really awesome discussion. We were going in a little bit worried and nervous, we didn’t know how it was going to go and I don’t know why I’m ever nervous because when you’ve got art to talk about, you always will have something to say. Thank you so very much, Jenn, for joining me today.

Jennifer Easterling: I’m so happy to do it.

Cindy Ingram: That is all for today. We will see you again next week. Again, if you want to be on the podcast and you want to talk about a work of art and share something meaningful to you, and have a conversation like this, we would love you to be on the podcast. If you go to artclasscurator.com/category/podcast, at the bottom, there’s a forum that says share your art story, fill that out and tell us about it. We would love to talk to you about it. Thank you so much for listening. See you later.

When you’re a teacher, one thing is certain, the lesson planning never ends. The Curated Connections Library is here to help with hundreds of art connection lessons and activities. Our signature SPARK work lessons include everything you need to teach an artwork every single week. Each lesson features one diverse and captivating work of art, and is complete with discussion questions, engaging activities to create deeper art connections and related art project ideas. With unique worksheets and Powerpoint presentations, every lesson is classroom ready. Get your free SPARK work lesson and take a break from lesson planning by going to artclasscurator.com/freelesson.

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