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Her new film trilogy presented on the occasion of the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Biennale
On the occasion of the Venice Biennale 2026, Associazione Genesi and Banca Ifis, with Ifis art, have brought to Venice the latest work by director and visual artist Shirin Neshat entitled Do U Dare!. A project that explores the themes of displacement, isolation, protest, artistic obsession and the fine line between creation and self-destruction.
Shirin Neshat’s new film trilogy is a project curated by Ilaria Bernardi and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and presented by Gladstone Gallery and Galleria Lia Rumma in collaboration with Magonza Editore.
Inspired by the tragic story of Nasim Aghdam, a media figure of Iranian origin whose story deeply inspired Neshat, the Do U Dare! project explores the intertwined connections that linked the artists. Set in three different socioeconomic contexts of New York, it investigates the paradox between the inner and outer worlds of women: between reality and illusion, between American society and the Iranian female perspective.
The project retraces the story of Nasim Aghdam, an Iranian woman of the Bahá’í faith who, as a child, was forced to flee to the United States to escape persecution by the Iranian government.
Growing up in a California suburb, Aghdam experienced a profound condition of isolation and a sense of not belonging to American society, while at the same time progressively losing the connection with her Iranian roots.
In response to this identity fracture, she built her own virtual universe by opening a YouTube channel, where she performed in highly stylized videos, singing and dancing. Through these performances she expressed her will, her anger, and an urgent need to be seen and recognized. Her videos, both provocative and destabilizing, embodied and subverted the universal image of the woman as an object of desire and control, openly defying the audience’s expectations and mocking them.
Her content went viral, reaching millions of views, until the sudden closure of her account by the platform. Aghdam experienced this event as a form of authoritarian censorship, echoing what her family had endured in Iran. In 2018, at the age of 38, she entered the YouTube headquarters armed, wounded several people, and finally took her own life.
The three videos that make up Shirin Neshat’s trilogy unfold in different socioeconomic contexts within the New York metropolitan area, composing a fragmented portrait of Nasim Aghdam’s inner world.
The first video, set in an immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn, follows Nasim as she moves through a community marked by poverty, exclusion, and silent despair. Observing lives trapped in bureaucratic indifference and cultural alienation, she becomes a witness to the cruelty hidden behind the American dream. Her quiet rebellion grows progressively out of a desperate need to be heard, ultimately transforming into a radical act of protest and revenge.
The second video, shot in the financial heart of Wall Street, places Nasim in the midst of a bustling and frantic district, where men and women move mechanically through their routines, emotionally drained and disconnected. As night falls, that soulless crowd is mysteriously drawn to a disembodied musical voice. Following the call of the sound, Nasim discovers she is the source, transformed into a performer capable of capturing the crowd’s attention and moving them to tears. The work explores Nasim’s obsession with fame, recognition, and public approval.
The final video takes place in Nasim’s home in a New York suburb, where she secretly creates her digital content, inspired by her experiences with the world and the media. She repeatedly plays different characters — singing, dancing, and shifting from one persona to another. Through these performances, she ridicules the image that America builds of itself as a global superpower, highlighting the contradictions that sustain it: political hypocrisy, systemic racism, and the persistent structures of injustice that contradict the national rhetoric of freedom and democracy. In her videos emerges the grotesque disparity between extreme wealth and celebrity culture on the one hand, and the persistent realities of poverty, violence, and global destruction on the other.
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