ZeroOne Award from Universität der Künste Berlin

On 21 November 2003, Shirin Neshat was honored with the ZeroOne Award by the Universität der Künste Berlin, recognizing her trailblazing contributions to media and video art.[3][19] The award highlighted her innovative use of multi‑channel projections, sound, and performance to examine the psychological and political terrains faced by women living under conservative Islamic regimes and in exile.

By the early 2000s Neshat had moved decisively into moving‑image work with pieces such as Turbulent, Rapture, and Fervor, which juxtapose male and female spaces, public rituals and private emotions, and the visible and invisible aspects of religious authority.[9] The ZeroOne Award, based in a city with its own history of division and reunification, acknowledged the formal sophistication of her installations and their relevance to global conversations about boundaries—physical, ideological, and gendered.

Although not documented as a historic "first" for an Iranian or woman at the institution, this recognition signaled the embrace of Neshat’s work within European academic and artistic circles concerned with digital and media art.[3][19] It supported the view that video installation could function both as cinema and as conceptual inquiry, and it helped consolidate her reputation as a key figure in the evolution of new media art at the turn of the twenty‑first century.