This catalogue presents the series Rapture (a video and 12 photographs) realized by Shirin Neshat, Golden Lion of the XLVIII Venice Biennial in 1999. This book contains the 12 photographs of Rapture, like the now mythical one featuring veiled women on a beach realized in the grandiose site of Essaouira Fortress in Morocco, as the other works of this series.
The text by James Rondeau, Chief Curator of Contemporary Art, Department of Twentieth-Century Painting and Sculpture, at the Art Institute of Chicago, enlightens the Iranian artist’s work, which questions the role and the situation of the Muslim women enduring religious and political pressures in the modern Islamic world.

Bilingual French & English text by James Rondeau. Filmography. Selective list of personal and group exhibitions.