Ghada

For the series, Our House is on Fire, conceptual artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat travelled to Cairo to capture the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution and the personal losses suffered. The works were created shortly after the unrelated and untimely death of the daughter of Neshat’s close collaborator and photographer on the project, Larry Burns, marking them with his mourning. This shared experience of individual, personal loss allowed Neshat to express a “universality of this kind of sorrow that transcends our differences, our class, national background, our age.”

In this series Neshat has created a photographic and calligraphic composite. Embedded in the furrows of sorrow on the faces of his subjects are lines of poetry, written by Iranian poet Mehdi Akhavan Sales. The text is nearly impossible to decipher, but the expression of each person clearly communicates the sentiment of the words. The series takes its name from the first few lines of the poem “A Cry” which reads:

My house is on fire, soul burning.

Ablaze in every direction.

            Carpets and curtains threaded to dust.

            Within the smoke of this raging fire

I sob, run to each corner

Shout, scream, yelp

With the voice of a sad howl and bitter laughter.