Shirin Neshat’s Waiting for Spring (2020)
© Shirin Neshat
We were lucky enough to receive a wonderful image and message of hope from David Hockney last week. Since then, we have been asking other leading artists if they would like to contribute too. Here, the US-Iranian artist Shirin Neshat has sent us a photograph taken of her garden in Upstate New York, where she has been staying for the past week. “I think it’s a great idea to motivate the art community to send positive messages in this time of crisis,” she says.
Neshat has been spending her time walking and surrounding herself with nature, although she says that it is still very wintry where she is. “I’m taking my iPhone everywhere to take shots of images that feel like life,” she tells The Art Newspaper.
“I love this paradoxical picture,” says Neshat. “20 March was the first day of spring and our Persian New Year. We all grow this sprout as a part of an ancient Persian ritual, but this morning I woke up to a tremendous winter storm. Nature has its own magic!”
Neshat says that a lot of consolatory quotes have been coming to mind during this time of crisis. “One quote that I heard and liked very much was from a radio interview with a New York-based Norwegian woman who owned a bar,” the artists tells us. “In reaction to the coronavirus pandemic, she relayed an old saying from Norway: ‘Either it will go well or it will pass, and these are both good options… we will get through this.'”
#ArtCanHelp
