Sayed, from the series Our House is on Fire,

2013

In 2013, two years after public protests led to the ousting of Egypt’s president, and amid a renewed outpouring of civic unrest, Neshat traveled from New York to Cairo to create the most documentary series of work to that point in her career. Finding parallels between the concerns of Egyptian protesters and the frustrations and struggles of citizens in her native Iran, Neshat invited subjects from the streets of Cairo into a makeshift studio to share their stories. Exchanging narratives of grief and loss, as well as resistance, determination, and cultural and national pride, created an environment of mutual trust and empathy, which Neshat captured in the emotionally heightened expression of each individual. Then, to make visually manifest the dialogue between citizen activists of Egypt and of Iran, she inscribed the face of each portrait with lines of Persian poetry in her signature hand-lettered calligraphy. "My house is on fire, soul burning / Ablaze in every direction," begins the poem by Iranian poet Mehdi Akhavan that gives the series from which this portrait is drawn its title.