Born and raised in Qazvin, Iran, Shirin Neshat (b. 1957) moved to California in 1974 to study art at the University of California, Berkeley. She later moved to New York and spent the next decade working at Storefront for Art and Architecture, an alternative art space in Manhattan. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, long after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, that Neshat returned to Iran for the first time. Seeing the lasting effects of the revolution, she returned to New York and began pursuing a career as an artist, creating work that reflected her thoughts on Eastern and Western cultures as well as her experiences bridging the two.

On Guard (1997) is part of a photographic series Neshat created in the 1990s titled Women of Allah (1993–97), which focused on women, Islam, and revolution. Many of the works depict closely cropped views of women wearing chadors, some armed with guns and inscribed with Farsi poetry on exposed areas of skin. The complexity and sensitivity of the themes addressed in the work are revealed in the breadth of passionate conversations they engendered. Critics decried the series for both stereotyping Muslim women and for romanticizing the Iranian Revolution. The artist herself has stated that the series was an early comment on the West’s inability to understand Iranian culture. While art historians, critics, and journalists were debating the merits and flaws of the photographs, in 1996, Iran banned Neshat from returning to her home country due to the political nature of her art.