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Born in Qazvin, Iran
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Neshat left Iran to study art in Los Angeles in 1974, just prior to the Iran Islamic Revolution, as she had been brought up to accept Western values by her father.
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In 1993, she began exhibiting her first photographic works to critical acclaim. Although trained as a painter, Neshat contends that photography—black and white—conveys clarity and simplicity unlike any other medium.
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Her life in exile and nostalgia for a home she was officially banned from in 1996 informed her earliest bodies of work. In retrospect, she can see her obsession with narrating Iranian history in an allegorical way in her work.
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Neshat took her work to even further and more prestigious destinations. She held exhibitions—which included video, music and multi-media elements— in London, Berlin and the Spanish city of León.