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Rapture Series (Women in Line)
On View
Not on view
Object number2004.15

Rapture Series (Women in Line)

Artist (Iranian, 1957-)
Date1999
Mediumgelatin silver print
Dimensionsframe: 14 1/2 × 27 3/4 × 1 1/8 in. (36.8 × 70.5 × 2.9 cm)
sheet: 11 × 24 in. (27.9 × 61 cm)
image: 9 in. × 22 1/2 in. (22.9 × 57.2 cm)
Credit LinePermanent Collection Fund
Exhibition History"Worlds Collide: Surveying the Cultural Landscape," KIA (Sept. 11 - Nov. 28, 2004). "Highlights of the KIA Permanent Collection, (purchased with Auction funds)," Gallery 5 (Sept. 9 - Oct. 14, 2006). "Framing Moments: Photography from KIA's Permanent Collection," KIA (Feb. 6 - May 16, 2021)Label TextShirin Neshat’s Rapture Series (Women in Line) probes the roles of women within Islamic cultures. This image is a still from her 13-minute film, Rapture, which incorporates two projections, one showing men and the other women – a structure that underlines the gendered social divides within many Muslim societies, including Neshat’s native Iran. This still displays women wearing black chadors, or floor-length cloaks. However, in the vast Moroccan desert where Rapture was filmed, the necessity of the chador, whose intended function is, in part, to protect the modesty of Muslim women by veiling their physical appearance, is called into question. Indeed, in a world in which genders are completely divided as they seem to be in Neshat’s film, the very notion of gendered social roles can begin to seem nonsensical. In this image, the cloaked women seem to fill the entire view of the camera, yet they are still quite far away – an allusion, perhaps, to the omnipresence but seeming invisibility and lack of understanding of women in many Muslim countries. However, Neshat’s project is no crude critique or caricature. Instead, it invokes simplistic understandings of Islamic cultures’ gender dynamics and external stereotypes about the Muslim world only to undermine them – a strategy likely born of the artist’s unique perspective as an expatriate living in the United States and reflecting on her upbringing from afar. While the women in Rapture are associated with the natural world in a way that seems reminiscent of old stereotypes that portray the female gender as untamed and uncultured, they are also depicted as beautiful, powerful, and, in some ways more than others, independent. Rapture is ultimately an acknowledgment of the complicated status of women with Muslim societies and celebrates their strength amidst complex and challenging social circumstances.