NEW YORK, NY.- On Tuesday, January 28, the International Center of Photography will present the Spotlight Award to visual artist Shirin Neshat at the 2014 ICP Spotlights, an annual luncheon honoring women seminal in visual arts, particularly photography or film. An innovator using image to explore gender, society, politics and identity in the Arab world, Neshat will discuss her work with Anne Pasternak, president of the global public art nonprofit Creative Time.

The event will also feature the first annual ICP Legacy Award, presented to longtime faculty member Chuck Kelton.

Support raised through this event benefits education and exhibition programs at ICP.

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian-born visual artist. Using still and moving images, she provides a panoramic view of contemporary Islam. Neshat’s poetic imagery responds to the complex ideological underpinnings of Islam and explores the tension between tradition and modernity, east and west, expression and censure. For Neshat, women and men are emblematic of societal transformations; in particular, the position of women provides a more holistic understanding of a changing cultural landscape. Neshat’s early work is mainly photographs; she later shifted focus to video installations and more recently to film. In 1999, she received the International Award of the XLVIII Venice Biennale for Turbulent and Rapture. Neshat made her directorial debut in 2009 with Women Without Men, for which she won the Silver Lion for best director at the 66th Annual Venice Film Festival. Neshat lives and works in New York and is represented by Gladstone Gallery, and Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont in Paris.