Speechless

    In different types of societies, namely totalitarian and communist regimes, people are forced into silence by the government. This is due to the government’s need to control the people in radical ways so that they will always be in power. These high ranking government officials believe that if they keep the populace ignorant by giving them a corrupt educational system and misguided beliefs, they will stomp out any possibility of uprising.

    Speechless shows a woman with a gun peeking from her head scarf. She looks miserable and terrified, but she doesn’t look like she is about to scream in fear. The bags under her eyes indicate that she can’t sleep because of the fear that she faces every day. However, she looks like she is going to keep quiet because that is what the government wants from her, or they will kill her. This shows that because of the people’s willingness to comply with the government’s demands, the government wins in many cases until a large majority of the people have had enough and demand reform.

    This piece of art was influenced by the Iranian revolution and the changes that were brought on by it. Shirin Neshat was born in Iran, but couldn’t return until eleven years after she had graduated from high school due to the instability of her home country (1). The Iran that she returned to was nothing like the home that she had left fifteen years earlier. "Persian culture is based on quite different values to the Islamic one. It is less stiff, more poetic and bookish and very old. The new government brought a very strict, pure form of Islam into the country. They wished to erase Persian history and to replace it with a general Islamic culture.” (1) She explored her sense of homelessness through art and made many Islamic influenced paintings.