Introduction
Gender, power and freedom are three interrelated subjects which arouse varied views when they are being discussed. Gender shapes power and freedom, from the private interactions of the household to the uppermost levels of political decisions-making. Also, gender divides freedom and power – inequalities between women and men are among the most persistent patterns in the distribution of freedom and power. For example, the lack of influence by women marks political decision-making the world over. Generally, what it means to being a woman is to be powerless – lack of freedom, accommodating, submissive and quite – and by contrast, a real man is powerful – ability to impose will, in control, outspoken and freedom to do what they want, especially in relation to women. In this paper, the author focuses on three artists from three different countries, and discusses one work from each artist which seeks to address the issue of gender, power and freedom, altogether. The essay also compares and contrasts these three artworks, presenting their differences and similarities. Another area of focus in this paper will be relating the topic of gender, power and freedom to the three countries where the artists come from, and the reason behind the artists’ motivation to do the artworks. In order to address the topic, this essay will focus on three artists – Shirin Neshat, Iran, Mona Hatoum, Palestine, and Gazbia Sirry, Egypt.
Profile of the Artists
Shirin Neshat, Iran
Shirin Neshat is a modern Iranian artist best famous for movies like “Rapture (1999),” which examines the relationship between women and the cultural and religious value system of Islam. Born on March 26, 1957 in Qazin, Iran Neshat left the country to study in the US at the University of California at Berkeley afore the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Although her early photographs were explicitly political, her film narratives have a tendency to be more abstract, focusing on themes of society, gender and identify (Artnet, 2019) . Currently, the artist lives and works in New York, NY. Neshat’s works are included in the collections of galleries including The Museum of Modern Artwork in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
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Mona Hatoum, Palestine
Mona Hatoum is a modern Palestinian-British installation and video artist who is famous for the use of found, household objects in her artistic works, infused with personal history and significance. The works of Hatoum often focus around politics and issues concerning gender and the body. Hatoum was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1952. Her parents were Palestinian and she studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where following the advent of war in her home republic, she was forced to escape. Her first main work was “Measures of Distance (1988),” a video which lasts for fifteen minutes showing her mother taking shower while Hatoum reads from her letters, exploring the complicated relationship of the artist with war-ravaged Palestine and her adopted home of Lebanon. Hatoum shifted from video to installation work in her later works, which included “Light Sentence (1992), a sculpture of metal grids which symbolizes imprisonment, which was demonstrated at her first solo exhibition at the State Chapter Gallery in Cardiff (Artnet, 2019) . She got a nomination for the Turner Prize in 1995, and she has from then held solo exhibitions at the Tate Modern in London and New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. Her work is collected in various museums including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Gallery in London, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Kunsthaus in Zürich and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
Gazbia Sirry, Egypt
Gazbia Sirry is an Egyptian painter who was born in Cairo. Sirry studied fine arts and come to be a professor at the Helwan University, in the painting department of the Faculty of Art Education. Sirry is regarded as one of the most important Egyptian artists, with a diverse and innovative profession of over 50 years. Sirry’s profession is rich and diverse, and is characterized by an exemplary resourcefulness (Almasar. 2008) . It would be hard to, though, to limit and confine Sirry in any traditional school, even though her bold and vivid brushstrokes have common characteristics with Neo-Expressionism – a school of personality and individuality.
Having a rich curriculum, which includes over fifty personal exhibitions, Sirry continues painting for the love of art, a means of expressing her fears and joy. The art of Sirry is distinguished for revitalization in which she expressed the traditions and feelings of the Egyptian woman in the 1960s. During the 1970s, she made use of the pyramid pictures and constructional mixture in her works to express the day-to-day life of the Egyptian woman, and during the 1990s she assisted in the liberation of the Egyptian woman from the old traditions via her work (Almasar. 2008) . Sirry is among the leading modern Egyptian artists, with an innovative and varied career of about fifty years. Sirry’s canvases have been exhibited from Stockholm to Dakar, from Beijing to Sao Paulo, and are held in private and public collections globally. This major an appreciation and reflective of her work comprises over 180 oil paintings, sketches, etchings, lithographs and water colors, along with various essays by leading critics of art.
The Artists’ Works and their Representation of Gender, Power and Freedom
Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence , 1994
Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, Women of Allah series, 1994
The darkly dressed woman wielding a weapon of Neshat’s image Rebellious Silence , 1994 features a woman clad in chador who holds a gun barrel upright against her face in a manner that it dissects her body into two. This female warrior gazes directly at the camera, her stare both resolute and distant. In the years ever since Neshat created her iconic pictures of Iranian women, this conflicting idea of the empowerment and agency of Muslim women has spread past Iran. In the years since she shot Rebellious Silence , the impression of the covered female as a warrior has started signifying a competing notion of empowerment focused on gender discrimination instead of parity (Young, 2015) . It is clear that anti-imperialism and anti-Western reference points are thought as more authentic from women from Iran than one centered only on equality, on females being like men, or other basic parallels binding unveiling with freedom.
Given that the Islamist armed and veiled woman warrior model centered on complementarity rather than equality, it envisages the realms of women and men as distinct but instilled with their own structures of power whereby women could become leaders. Certain legitimacy for this idea of gender relations has been spread by the doubts feminist researchers such as Aysha Hidayatullah has articulated for the undertaking of finding religious support for gender equality in the Islamic doctrinal texts (Young, 2015) . Thus, power is being reconstituted and reconstructed - Neshat’s women wielded guns and appeal concurrently, their veils do not affirm their sexuality, the woman stare looking back at its audience is unflinching and bold. Women in conventional theological schools in Iran and beyond – in Islamabad, in Muslim ghettoes in Britain and France.
Similar to the transcription of stories and words on faces of Iranians bears a specific connection with the American-Iranian political modern-day, so is the depiction of veiled but armed women. During the time of shooting the image, the post-revolution regime of Iran was among the first ones to push the idea of empowering Iranian women as a literal using of weapons. The picture of women clad in black chadors as they clasped guns was a common element of the post-1979 Iranian government’s scheme of reconstructing the understanding of the empowerment of women, not as a pursuit derived from the West, but instead as an accurate wielding of disparaging power for fighting for basic rights such as right to freedom of speech and expression (Zakaria, 2015) . In Neshat’s depiction of conceptions of militarization and segregation, veils and guns come together to epitomize the dual dangers a female could pose, one of a physical when veiled sexuality, and the other of the literal bullet in the cask. Overall, Rebellious Silence represents a world of segregated spheres, where women and men live apart, although they stay connected.
Among the most visible symbols of cultural transformation in Iran has been the necessity for all women to wear the veil in public. Although most Muslim women feel that this practice is affirmative and empowering of their religious identities, in the Western viewpoint the veil has been coded as a symbol of Islamic oppression of women. Neshat chose to explore this apprehensive sign in her art as a means of reconciling her own conflicting emotions. In “Women of Allah,” began shortly after she returned to Iran in 1991, the veil serves as both a symbol of oppression and freedom.
The veil is aimed at protecting the bodies of women from men gaze turning them as sexualized objects, but it too protects women from being visible at all. In this context the “gaze” becomes an emotional symbol of power, shame, sin and sexuality. According to Young (2015) Neshat is familiar with feminist theories which describe how popular and visual culture normalize the “male gaze” – women’s bodies are usually depicted as sex objects in film and marketing, available to be seen without impact. However, in the images of Neshat, and especially the Rebellious Silence, females return the gaze, which break free from years of subservience to men.
Rebellious Silence does not offer the audience yet another opportunity to pity the women of Iran in the way they are so used to or to disregard their own government’s responsibility in Iran’s modern political realm. What the image accomplishes is much more complicated – a radical reclamation of history which tells the story of Iran through the woman gaze, but declines to filter it into simple lenses of awful oppressive Islamic Iran. If the theistic authoritarianism of the government of Iran persistently holds that the alienated world it builds, in which rebellion is a crime and freed femininity a burden, then the Iranian women are waiting for liberation from their oppression, their struggles focused wholly on throwing off covers (Zakaria, 2015) . The power of resilience, fixated so emotively in the exhibitions of Neshat, forces the viewer to think outside this simple formula and think about the intertwined fates of the men and women that makes simple oppositions only commonplace complications. A feminist history of Iran like the one presented by Neshat, cautions all its audiences – the exclusionary regime of Iran, whose political scheme relies on affirming the moral aptness of a gender segregated society, where women lack power and freedom.
Mona Hatoum, No Way IV, 2013
Mona Hatoum, No Way IV, 2013, stainless steel
In this artwork, Hatoum repurposes a stainless-steel kitchen colander. She places the colander upside down to make her modifications to the bottom the focal point. A short stainless-steel dowel is protruding out of all circular holes, which successfully makes the colander of no use. Liquid is unable to enter its current location or remain in the colander when turned upside down. Hatoum explained this thought terrain as, “A kind of self-examination and an examination of the power structures that control us: Am I the jailed or the jailer? The oppressed or the oppressor? Or both. I want the work to complicate these positions and offer an ambiguity and ambivalence rather than concrete and sure answers” ( Stephanie, 2018). The artwork may as well be interpreted via a feminist perspective as Hatoum discarding traditional roles of being a woman, and rather championing for reconstitution of women’s role in the modern society through liberation and empowerment (Mansoor, 2010). On the surface, the title of the artwork informs the audience that the colander cannot work if they try using it. Nevertheless, it is as well a bold defiance statement. The expectations of housewife are long gone – and women are rejecting the conventional roles of oppression, and being confined in the kitchen and other house chores, as well as being taken as sex objects by men. The artwork presents a form of defiance by men and their championing of gender equality, freedom and power and having equal rights just as men, because if the society continues with the old traditions, things will not work and the society will be nonfunctional.
Gazbia Sirry, The Garden, 1959
Gazbia Sirry, The Garden, 1959
Sirry expresses her long-term devotion to matters of gender politics, feminism, political freedom and nationalist struggles, in a visual language which is truly, contemporary Egyptian, as demonstrated in her bold paintings. In her work The Garden, Sirry represents women in an improvised garden (Seggerman, 2018) . The painting is a representation of typical Egyptian women in their home, which can be interpreted that the artist wanted what the women in the culture of Egypt and the roles they play as housewives and staying at home. Through this, the artist thus advocates for women to move from just the household and engage in politics and electoral processes.
Comparison of the Artistic Works
Essentially, this essay has focused on three female artists and who are of Arab nationalities. Based on the analysis of some of their iconic artworks, it is evident that the artists are the new face of feminism in the Arab world. The works of the artists mainly focus on advocating for issues including gender equality. Women empowerment, and the changing roles of women in the society. The artists, seen as the modern wave of Arab feminists has shown that the liberating struggles of Egypt, Iran and Palestine have had their ripple impact on the woman millennial generation. Most of their works can be interpreted as defending equal rights and gender equality as a non-negotiable condition for establishing real long-term democracies in the Arab world.
In particular, the three artistic works of these artists discussed above present the concepts of gender structure, and how women and men are separated, yet very connected. The artists’ works are, perhaps, taking a more implementation practical strategy in transforming a fairer world women in the Islam society. Patriarchal oppressive instruments in the Islam religion has inhibited women of their power think, thus stripping them their freedom and power to change their conditions. A greater focus of these three artists has been put on creating a more equitable internal world and a sense of empowerment and liberty to the Muslim women, as well as preparing them to rise to political leadership.
Evidently, art has become the major arena which helps in empowering mindsets, pursuing to deconstruct old deep-seated philosophies and power structures. For instance, in the years ever since Neshat created her iconic pictures of Iranian women, this conflicting idea of the empowerment and agency of Muslim women has spread past Iran. In the years since she shot Rebellious Silence , the impression of the covered female as a warrior has started signifying a competing notion of empowerment focused on gender discrimination instead of parity. Similarly, Hatoum’s artwork discussed above could be understood through a feminist perspective to mean that she is discarding traditional roles of being a woman, and rather advocating for reconstruction of women’s roles in the modern Islamic society through liberation and empowerment. Looking closely at these two works, it can be said the works are trying to deconstruct the mentality of oppressing women, and thus the society should move from such old traditions and give women liberty of working as men do, and making their living, rather than confining them to the traditional roles of housewives and domestic workers.
Further, the work by Sirry advocates for gender politics. The message which she tries to communicate through her work is that inequalities in political contribution weaken the quality of representation, legitimacy and deliberation in the process of democracy. Fundamentally, after empowerment, women traditionally got involved in politics less than men in world democracies. However, recently women are making great steps in holding political leadership positions. However, in the Arab world, women continue reporting less political involvement across various participatory attitudes and activities including becoming members of political parties, attending political rallies, and showing political interest. Moreover, these gender inequalities persist across different developing democracies like Palestine, Iran and Egypt. Gender differences are biggest in the orientations and attitudes which result in active electoral involvement. Gender equality in political discussion and interest has the potential to broaden policy demands scope and even possibly transform the nature of the Arab democratic process.
However, the three artistic works have some differences. As a Muslim woman, Neshat’s work focuses on and tries to address the plight of Muslim women. Particularly, Neshat presents the oppression of Muslim women and campaigns for their empowerment and liberty. On the other hand, Hatoum’s work generally is focused on women in general, and not particularly Muslim women. Further, Sirry’s work concentrates on gender politics and calling for more involvement of women of women in politics and in the electoral process for a gender-balanced society. While Neshat and Houtom’s paintings focus on the overall empowerment and freedom for women, Sirry’s painting is majorly focused on political empowerment and liberation of women.
Conclusion
In conclusion, contemporary artists are increasingly becoming defenders of human rights through their work. Specifically, women artists are advocating for women rights and the end to women discrimination and gender equality. By interpreting their paintings, one can see an aspect intertwined in the call for freedom for women, empowerment for women and gender balance in all spheres between men and women. Freedom and power are shared by gender starting from the private interrelationships of the home to the highest levels of political representation. Conversely, gender may divide power and freedom through differences between men and women. Thus, this paper has presented three artists and their works, which could be understood as works representing gender, power and freedom. In particular, these artistic works emphasize on the freedom and empowerment of women. Neshat’s painting focuses on the plight of Muslim women. Mainly, Neshat is a representation of the oppression of Muslim women and champions for their empowerment and liberty. Further, Hatoum’s work is centered on women’s changing role in the society, and the need to shift from the traditional roles of women ad housewives and sexual objects. Finally, Sirry’s work concentrates on gender politics and calling for more involvement of women of women in politics and in the electoral process for a gender-balanced society. In general, these artists have been for a long time on the course to boldly make defiance statements on the position of women in the society, and the need to make women more empowered and liberated from the old cultural beliefs and traditions which limit the progress and development of women across the world.
References
Almasar. (2008). Gazbia Sirry | Biography. Retrieved from http://almasargallery.com/gazbia-sirry-biography
Artnet. (2019). Shirin Neshat. Retrieved from http://www.artnet.com/artists/shirin-neshat/
Artnet. (2019). Mona Hatoum. Retrieved from http://www.artnet.com/artists/mona-hatoum/
Mansoor, J. (2010). A Spectral Universality: Mona Hatoum's Biopolitics of Abstraction. October , 49-74.
Seggerman, A. D. (2018). Gazbia Sirry. Retrieved from http://www.encyclopedia.mathaf.org.qa/en/bios/Pages/Gazbia-Sirry.aspx
Stephanie. (2018). Galvanized Beauty of Mona Hatoum. Retrieved from https://www.donottouchblog.com/home/galvanized-beauty-of-mona-hatoum
Young, A. (2015). Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, Women of Allah series. Retrieved from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/global-contemporary/a/neshat-rebellious
Zakaria, R. (2015, September 12). The Feminism of Resilience: Shirin Neshat at the Hirshhorn. Retrieved from https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-feminism-of-resilience-shirin-neshat-at-the-hirshhorn/#!
