Raw power from the shadows

By TJ McNAMARA

Much has been written and broadcast about the moving exhibition of films and still photography by Shirin Neshat, on at the Auckland Art Gallery until November 7. So far, much of the comment about the artist - who won a Golden Lion at a Venice Biennale - has been about Neshat's life, split between two cultures in the East and West, and about the themes of the work. But little has been said about why the work is so powerful.

Her films are not films in the cinema sense. Although they have a narrative, they tell no particular story. They work schematically to reach deep into areas of myth and the social condition formerly occupied by epic history painting.

Every public gallery of modern art, from Madrid to Vienna, now gives space to artists who work in video, DVD or short films.

For this exhibition we are fortunate the gallery has chosen to project these films in three separate mini-theatres. Two of the films require screens on opposite walls.

For works such as this we really need a new way of looking. We need to concentrate to absorb the added elements of time and movement.

The copious and valuable material made available by the gallery expands on the main theme of the work, the position of women in a Muslim society - particularly in Iran, where the artist was born and where marked changes were made in the position of women when it became a religious state.

The narrative is abstract and ambiguous. We must look intently and use our imagination to draw meaning from them.

They are not simplistic feminism. They are much more profound and deal with not only the relations between men and women but with life and death, knowledge, and the beauty that is possible in an arid land.

They have something of the mythic poetry of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and recall such evocative lines as, "Come under the shadow of this red rock".

The works' impact lies in their startling visual power. Often it comes from the desert places and rocky ground where they are set. Often it comes from the black chadors of the women. Their costumes and their shadows often combine to make them one entity, like black stone.

A good place to start is the still photography of the artist's early Women of Allah series, where the relationship of women to their veiling dress is examined.

These photographs show parts of the woman the chador does not cover: the face, the hands, the feet. Close-ups of these areas are matched with the menacing muzzle of a gun.

Across the hands and feet are poems in Arabic, beautifully lettered but to the Western eye as mysterious as the black garment itself.

What the gun barrel, hard and thrusting, emphasises is the vulnerability of the flesh. The bare feet are beautiful, elegant and feminine but bring to mind the bastinado, the terrible flogging of the feet.

Other still photographs taken from the films always catch beautifully composed scenes. From Tooba they feature the Tree of Life standing in a walled enclosure and the woman who dissolves into it.

The shots taken from Soliloquy highlight the telling contrast between age-old dress and modern concrete, as well as the isolation of the individual.

It is best to begin viewing with the one-screen installation Passage, which has a musical framework by American minimalist composer Philip Glass. It is not just background but has a functional, emotional relationship to the visuals. It helps to tell you what to feel about what you are seeing.

Passage begins on a wide seashore backed with dunes against a cloudless sky. With singular intentness, a procession of men carry a body. A group of women - made one by the black mystery of their costume - are scrabbling with their bare hands to dig a grave in rocky earth. Pale dust tinged with red rises from their work.

The only person not in black is a child making a nest of stones near a cairn of rocks. A fire extends from the loop of rocks and envelops the still separate men and women in a pall of smoke. The activities of men are resolved in the work of women. The fire suggests time and the child the future. The work depends on the basic elements of water, earth, fire and air.

Neshat's art performs the remarkable feat of remaining true to her culture and absolutely authentic while communicating feelings that are totally international.

The show called Friendly Fire at Auckland University's Gus Fisher Gallery at the top of Shortland St until September 18 would normally be a considerable event but it pales a little by comparison with the work at the Auckland gallery.

Nevertheless, there is much that is lively in this show. It also features projected short films and it is one of these - Floating in a Box, by Roman Signer - that is the highpoint of the exhibition.

It is a toy helicopter confined within four walls. It flies, it has an accident and frenetically thrashes about until it expires in a wrecked heap. It is astonishing that so much pathos can be wrung from the fate of a toy.

Stephan Demary's installation of 73 radios, and Max Gruter's Crash Test for Favourite Things - which is a big crushing mechanism for making useful, precious things into art - are lively works but do not have the equivalent emotional impact.

The show contains clever concepts. It is entertaining and has philosophical depth but, unlike the work of Neshat, rejects the possibility of absolute beauty.