[Discussion] Veil: Veiling, Representation, and Contemporary Art - book review

Tue, 08 Jun 2004 10:16:47 -0700

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*David A. Bailey and Gilane Tawadros, eds.* /Veil: Veiling, 
Representation, and Contemporary Art//. /Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. 187 
pp. Illustrations, bibliography. $25.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-262-52348-5.

Reviewed by *Huda Lutfi*, Visual Artist, and Department of Arabic 
Studies, The American University in Cairo.
Published by H-Gender-MidEast <http://www.h-net.msu.edu/%7Egend-mid/> 
(May, 2004)

*Veiling Practices and the Politics of Representation*

The image of the anonymous veiled woman has come to constitute an 
entrenched visual icon in Western media representation and discourses of 
modernity, one in which the contextual specificities of cultural 
geography and history, and economic, social, and political experiences, 
are largely ignored. To the Western mind, the veil is not only closely 
associated with the Muslim woman, but is almost always seen as evidence 
of her oppression and lack of agency. In order to challenge such 
simplistic and homogenizing assumptions, editors D. Bailey and J. 
Tawadros have sponsored Veil as a project that would contribute further 
to the critique of the imagistic and literary representation of veiling. 
What is special about this project is how it combines both the word and 
the image in its attempt to show how the various nuances and uses of 
veiling are continuously reshaped and manipulated through different 
lived historical experiences. In their introduction to Veil, the editors 
state: "This is the first project to address the question of the veil in 
all its complexities and ambiguities from the vantage point of 
contemporary visual art practice. Veil is a major exhibition and 
publication that brings together the work of twenty contemporary 
international artists from Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds whose work 
explores the symbolic significance of the veil and veiling in 
contemporary cultures." According to the editors, what prompted them to 
sponsor such a project is that it falls in line with the existing "trend 
in the visual art scene to re-examine the representation of the Other in 
art and popular culture" (p. 18). In addition to some of the photographs 
of the commissioned art works on exhibit, this publication brings 
together a collection of essays dealing with the historical and 
contemporary representation of the veil. Finally, the last section 
provides selected historical essays and images of the veil mostly going 
back to the colonial period.

The initial idea behind this project was conceived and researched by 
Zineb Sedira and Jananne al-Ani, two contemporary artists of 
French-Algerian and British-Iraqi backgrounds. In her essay, "Mapping 
the Illusive," Sedira expresses her serious concerns and doubts about 
"representing the unrepresentable," the veil here being the 
unrepresentable. As an artist acquainted with two cultures, the North 
African and the European, she poses the insightful, but perhaps 
apologetic question: what differences are there between the physical 
veil in Muslim culture and the mental veil in Western culture? While I 
may agree with Sedira's point, I do not think that the issue should be 
posited in terms of Islam and the West, for that simply re-enforces an 
old stereotypical opposition. I would like to suggest a wider context of 
understanding, one that stresses the comparative, and recognizes that 
complex veiling social practices are common to all human cultures.

Furthermore, if the intention is to transform the image, then is it 
possible, as Radhika Chopra suggests, to move such social practices away 
from the assumed "magnified kinship between women and veiling," 
particularly for Muslim women? In her essay on "Veiled Men," Chopra 
draws upon the veiling literature of South Asia as well as her fieldwork 
in North India to explore male veiling practices and gestures in 
domestic spaces. I agree with Sedira that "it is not just a question of 
critiquing the status quo. It is also about transforming the image" (p. 
64). If that is the case, then let us move away from the literal and 
limited idea of the Muslim veil to examine and understand other social 
practices of veiling that bring about or obstruct human communication. 
Just as Algerian women during their anti-colonial struggle manipulated 
the veil in their moments of resistance, we have the contemporary 
situation of Palestinian men and women adopting various strategies of 
veiling in their resistance against Israeli transgressions. Perhaps, the 
veiled Palestinian man could be perceived here as the "transgressive 
image" that Sedira asks us to make space for. He may represent "the 
outlaw rebel vision [that] is essential to any effort to create a 
context for transformation" (p. 64). Finally, as Chopra argues, the 
questioning of the single gender focus in veiling practices might lead 
to breaking new conceptual ground in the study of gender genealogies.[1]

With the exception of Hamid Naficy's essay on how rules of modesty in 
post-revolutionary Iran were manipulated and inscribed in films, less 
attention has been paid in the other essays to explore the dynamics of 
male-female veiling practices and gestures in specific contexts. 
Nonetheless, I believe that the editors made a careful selection of 
essays, which succeed in exposing and contesting the stereotypical 
re-presentation of the veil in the Western context. But did they succeed 
in transforming the image? Leila Ahmed's and Frantz Fanon's essays 
explore the colonial situation in which the whole question of veiling 
forcefully emerges in the process of colonizing Egypt and Algeria. Ahdaf 
Soueif's and Hamid Naficy's essays investigate more contemporary 
contexts, demonstrating the complexities and nuances involved in 
understanding the social practices of veiling in the case of urban Cairo 
and the Iranian film industry. Alison Donnell's incisive essay strongly 
argues that negative stereotypical representation of Muslim women has 
helped the American administration to justify continued military 
intervention.

More importantly, Donnell quotes Afra Jalabi in underlining how the 
"veil has now become a tool of political distraction; a false center to 
discussions of social justice and a highly charged symbol of difference 
that paralyzes productive cross-cultural debate and communication" (p. 
127). This point needs to be emphasized for it certainly allows us to 
question the validity of Veil as a project. Finally, Al-Ani's essay 
carefully examines how nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Western 
painters and photographers depicted Middle Eastern women, and 
demonstrates how this colonial legacy of images continues to serve as a 
springboard for modern and contemporary artists.

In commenting about the problem of interpreting the artists' work in 
this project, once again Sedira poses the question: "do the 
interpretations about artists' work instead serve to reinforce the 
limiting assumptions we are trying to subvert?" For one, since I have 
not seen the entire collection of the artists' works in the exhibition, 
my comments will be limited to what I can interpret of the images in the 
publication. I would like to deal first with the question of 
representation. The artists' biographies reveal that we are dealing with 
a community of artists who mostly work and live in Europe, and who are 
largely concentrated in London and Paris, followed by New York, Moscow, 
and Stockholm. That is, they are predominantly located in the centers of 
hegemonic metropolises, and not in the periphery they are 
"re-presenting." How can the images reproduced in the publication be 
claimed to fulfill the editors' ambitious intention to address "the 
question of the veil in all its ambiguities and complexities" to 
"re-examine the representation of the Other in art and popular culture"? 
Is it really possible for artists living and working in London, Paris, 
and New York to represent the nuances and complexities of veiling 
practices in the lived experiences of men and women in the Middle East 
or elsewhere? Why was there no serious effort to solicit the views of 
contemporary artists living and working in the cultural region of the 
Other? And if the intention is to subvert and question stereotypes, to 
explore nuances and complexities, then why is the publication full of 
stereotypical, exotic images of the veiled woman?

In addition to the exotic title of the book (VEIL in big bold red 
letters), the choice of the image on the cover self-defeats the claimed 
intention behind the project. It is simply another exotic image. How do 
Shireen Neshat's images of anonymous black veiled women help to 
transform the image? Sedira's tryptic image of the anonymous veiled 
woman, while elegant and beautiful, simply re-enforces the mystique of 
the feminine veil, particularly in her virginal look.

Admittedly, we do have some images in which male and female figures 
appear in a manner that suggests that dress codes could simply be a 
function or a construction of the historical or imagined moment (e.g. 
Strand, Offeh, AES Art Group, Abdu Allah, Kalkur). However, too many of 
the veil images are still closely akin to women, and Muslim women at 
that. There are too many archival images of the veiled North African 
woman. If we are going to limit ourselves to the veil as a physical 
cover, then I suggest a visit to such places as Rajistan, the Nubia of 
Egypt, and Sudan in order to see how men spend time and money on their 
meticulously wrapped head covers and shawls. And why is it when men use 
"veils" it carries a different social meaning?

Finally, we come to the whole issue of dialogue. Dialogue between whom? 
By largely excluding the other's presence from this project, we must say 
that this project is conceived for a Western audience. Is there any plan 
to establish a dialogue with the other? Is it part of the curators' 
project to show this exhibition in places like Morocco, Turkey, Egypt, 
or Iran? And how relevant would this exhibition be in such contexts? 
This project still conceives of veiling in terms of limited 
assumptions--it is still predominantly perceived as feminine and Muslim. 
We need to explore and broaden our understanding of the varieties of 
veiling practices in human cultures, to understand the politics of 
controlling or veiling the body, and to expand the cultural dialogue 
beyond those who live in the so called hegemonic cultural contexts. 
While it attempts to critique the politics of representation in the 
Western context, this publication is a work of re-presentation in and of 
itself.

Note

[1]. Radhika Chopra, "Veiled Men: Masculinity, Sexuality and Male 
Domestic Labour" (paper presented at the Gendered Bodies, Transnational 
Politics: Modernities Reconsidered Conference, American University, 
Cairo, 2003), p. 1.

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<title></title>
David A. Bailey and Gilane Tawadros, eds. Veil:
Veiling, Representation, and Contemporary Art. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. 187 pp.
Illustrations, bibliography.
$25.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-262-52348-5. 
Reviewed by Huda Lutfi, Visual Artist, and
Department of Arabic Studies, The American University in Cairo. 
Published by <a href="http://www.h-net.msu.edu/%7Egend-mid/">
H-Gender-MidEast</a> (May, 2004)

 

<center>Veiling Practices and the Politics of
Representation</center>

The image of the anonymous veiled woman has come to
constitute an entrenched visual icon in Western media representation
and discourses of modernity, one in which the contextual specificities
of cultural geography and history, and economic, social, and political
experiences, are largely ignored. To the Western mind, the veil is not
only closely associated with the Muslim woman, but is almost always
seen as evidence of her oppression and lack of agency. In order to
challenge such simplistic and homogenizing assumptions, editors D.
Bailey and J. Tawadros have sponsored <cite>Veil</cite> as a project
that would contribute further to the critique of the imagistic and
literary representation of veiling. What is special about this project
is how it combines both the word and the image in its attempt to show
how the various nuances and uses of veiling are continuously reshaped
and manipulated through different lived historical experiences. In
their introduction to <cite>Veil</cite>, the editors state: "This is
the first project to address the question of the veil in all its
complexities and ambiguities from the vantage point of contemporary
visual art practice. <cite>Veil</cite> is a major exhibition and
publication that brings together the work of twenty contemporary
international artists from Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds whose work
explores the symbolic significance of the veil and veiling in
contemporary cultures." According to the editors, what prompted them to
sponsor such a project is that it falls in line with the existing
"trend in the visual art scene to re-examine the representation of the
Other in art and popular culture" (p. 18). In addition to some of the
photographs of the commissioned art works on exhibit, this publication
brings together a collection of essays dealing with the historical and
contemporary representation of the veil. Finally, the last section
provides selected historical essays and images of the veil mostly going
back to the colonial period. 
 The
initial idea behind this project was conceived and researched by Zineb
Sedira and Jananne al-Ani, two contemporary artists of French-Algerian
and British-Iraqi backgrounds. In her essay, "Mapping the Illusive,"
Sedira expresses her serious concerns and doubts about "representing
the unrepresentable," the veil here being the unrepresentable. As an
artist acquainted with two cultures, the North African and the
European, she poses the insightful, but perhaps apologetic question:
what differences are there between the physical veil in Muslim culture
and the mental veil in Western culture? While I may agree with Sedira's
point, I do not think that the issue should be posited in terms of
Islam and the West, for that simply re-enforces an old stereotypical
opposition. I would like to suggest a wider context of understanding,
one that stresses the comparative, and recognizes that complex veiling
social practices are common to all human cultures. 
Furthermore, if the intention is to transform the
image, then is it
possible, as Radhika Chopra suggests, to move such social practices
away from the assumed "magnified kinship between women and veiling,"
particularly for Muslim women? In her essay on "Veiled Men," Chopra
draws upon the veiling literature of South Asia as well as her
fieldwork in North India to explore male veiling practices and gestures
in domestic spaces. I agree with Sedira that "it is not just a question
of critiquing the status quo. It is also about transforming the image"
(p. 64). If that is the case, then let us move away from the literal
and limited idea of the Muslim veil to examine and understand other
social practices of veiling that bring about or obstruct human
communication. Just as Algerian women during their anti-colonial
struggle manipulated the veil in their moments of resistance, we have
the contemporary situation of Palestinian men and women adopting
various strategies of veiling in their resistance against Israeli
transgressions. Perhaps, the veiled Palestinian man could be perceived
here as the "transgressive image" that Sedira asks us to make space
for. He may represent "the outlaw rebel vision [that] is essential to
any effort to create a context for transformation" (p. 64). Finally, as
Chopra argues, the questioning of the single gender focus in veiling
practices might lead to breaking new conceptual ground in the study of
gender genealogies.[1] 
 With the
exception of Hamid Naficy's essay on how rules of modesty in
post-revolutionary Iran were manipulated and inscribed in films, less
attention has been paid in the other essays to explore the dynamics of
male-female veiling practices and gestures in specific contexts.
Nonetheless, I believe that the editors made a careful selection of
essays, which succeed in exposing and contesting the stereotypical
re-presentation of the veil in the Western context. But did they
succeed in transforming the image? Leila Ahmed's and Frantz Fanon's
essays explore the colonial situation in which the whole question of
veiling forcefully emerges in the process of colonizing Egypt and
Algeria. Ahdaf Soueif's and Hamid Naficy's essays investigate more
contemporary contexts, demonstrating the complexities and nuances
involved in understanding the social practices of veiling in the case
of urban Cairo and the Iranian film industry. Alison Donnell's incisive
essay strongly argues that negative stereotypical representation of
Muslim women has helped the American administration to justify
continued military intervention. 
 More
importantly, Donnell quotes Afra Jalabi in underlining how the "veil
has now become a tool of political distraction; a false center to
discussions of social justice and a highly charged symbol of difference
that paralyzes productive cross-cultural debate and communication" (p.
127). This point needs to be emphasized for it certainly allows us to
question the validity of <cite>Veil</cite> as a project. Finally,
Al-Ani's essay carefully examines how nineteenth- and
early-twentieth-century Western painters and photographers depicted
Middle Eastern women, and demonstrates how this colonial legacy of
images continues to serve as a springboard for modern and contemporary
artists. 
 In commenting about the
problem of interpreting the artists' work in this project, once again
Sedira poses the question: "do the interpretations about artists' work
instead serve to reinforce the limiting assumptions we are trying to
subvert?" For one, since I have not seen the entire collection of the
artists' works in the exhibition, my comments will be limited to what I
can interpret of the images in the publication. I would like to deal
first with the question of representation. The artists' biographies
reveal that we are dealing with a community of artists who mostly work
and live in Europe, and who are largely concentrated in London and
Paris, followed by New York, Moscow, and Stockholm. That is, they are
predominantly located in the centers of hegemonic metropolises, and not
in the periphery they are "re-presenting." How can the images
reproduced in the publication be claimed to fulfill the editors'
ambitious intention to address "the question of the veil in all its
ambiguities and complexities" to "re-examine the representation of the
Other in art and popular culture"? Is it really possible for artists
living and working in London, Paris, and New York to represent the
nuances and complexities of veiling practices in the lived experiences
of men and women in the Middle East or elsewhere? Why was there no
serious effort to solicit the views of contemporary artists living and
working in the cultural region of the Other? And if the intention is to
subvert and question stereotypes, to explore nuances and complexities,
then why is the publication full of stereotypical, exotic images of the
veiled woman? 
 In addition to the exotic title of the book (<cite>VEIL</cite>
in big bold red letters), the choice of the image on the cover
self-defeats the claimed intention behind the project. It is simply
another exotic image. How do Shireen Neshat's images of anonymous black
veiled women help to transform the image? Sedira's tryptic image of the
anonymous veiled woman, while elegant and beautiful, simply re-enforces
the mystique of the feminine veil, particularly in her virginal look. 
Admittedly, we do have some images in which male and
female figures
appear in a manner that suggests that dress codes could simply be a
function or a construction of the historical or imagined moment (e.g.
Strand, Offeh, AES Art Group, Abdu Allah, Kalkur). However, too many of
the veil images are still closely akin to women, and Muslim women at
that. There are too many archival images of the veiled North African
woman. If we are going to limit ourselves to the veil as a physical
cover, then I suggest a visit to such places as Rajistan, the Nubia of
Egypt, and Sudan in order to see how men spend time and money on their
meticulously wrapped head covers and shawls. And why is it when men use
"veils" it carries a different social meaning? 
Finally, we come to the whole issue of dialogue.
Dialogue between whom?
By largely excluding the other's presence from this project, we must
say that this project is conceived for a Western audience. Is there any
plan to establish a dialogue with the other? Is it part of the
curators' project to show this exhibition in places like Morocco,
Turkey, Egypt, or Iran? And how relevant would this exhibition be in
such contexts? This project still conceives of veiling in terms of
limited assumptions--it is still predominantly perceived as feminine
and Muslim. We need to explore and broaden our understanding of the
varieties of veiling practices in human cultures, to understand the
politics of controlling or veiling the body, and to expand the cultural
dialogue beyond those who live in the so called hegemonic cultural
contexts. While it attempts to critique the politics of representation
in the Western context, this publication is a work of re-presentation
in and of itself. 
 Note 
[1]. Radhika Chopra, "Veiled Men: Masculinity,
Sexuality and Male
Domestic Labour" (paper presented at the Gendered Bodies, Transnational
Politics: Modernities Reconsidered Conference, American University,
Cairo, 2003), p. 1. 
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