Shirin Neshat, 61, is perhaps an unusual place to start this series: After graduating from art school in 1982, she gave up. Yet despite abandoning artmaking for 10 years, and working at an arts nonprofit in New York City, she eventually returned to and to her art practice. She soon generated a career-making aesthetic: Since 1993, she’s created black-and-white films and photographs that examine political conflict and Muslim culture via a feminist lens.
