Do U Dare! is a provocative new exhibition by artist Shirin Neshat, blending a haunting video installation and striking photographic works to interrogate the commodification of identity, the rise of authoritarianism, and the fragile line between self and spectacle.
At the core of the exhibition lies Neshat's immersive video installation, Do U Dare!. The film follows Nasim, a young Iranian woman as she wanders through the heart of New York City’s immigrant enclaves. Amid the cacophony of rushing trains and weary gazes of strangers, Nasim is drawn into a labyrinth of layered realities. Monitors plastered with the image of a suited politician—an omnipresent media figure—loom over her journey, culminating in a town square where Nasim encounters the man in person delivering hollow rhetoric to a crowd of vacant-faced immigrants. Nasim watches in disbelief.
Nasim's odyssey crescendos in a surreal wig shop, transformed into a stage of frozen humanity. Rows of mannequins—diverse in color and origin, yet uniform in their lifeless perfection—mirror the fragmentation of identity under systems of control. Here, Neshat's lens lingers on the eerie slippage between doll and human: a subtle blink, a silent breath, then dismantled, mutilated, and broken figures, a quiet glimpse at a subaltern world we all recognize but dare not face. Amid the carnage, Nasim encounters her mirrored double—a porcelain replica bearing her scars. This silent encounter sparks a quiet rebellion. In a rupture of agency, Nasim merges with her double and decides to dismantle the oppressive "medium" that enslaves them, echoing Marshall McLuhan's axiom: "The medium is the message."
Complementing the film are Neshat's arresting photographic works, which render human subjects as delicate porcelain dolls. Cracked glazes and ghostly expressions invite viewers to confront unsettling questions: How much of our identities are molded by unseen forces? Can autonomy survive in a world where lives are packaged and shelved?
"Nasim's journey is a metaphor for the awakening we all must confront," says Neshat. "In a time of political theater and curated identities, Do U Dare! asks not for loud rebellion, but for the courage to see—and shatter—the illusions that bind us.”
