Before you lower your gaze, self-annihilation takes place.
“...for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”[1] – Friedrich Nietzsche
The mysticism of sight promotes a simple truth – namely that if one speaks of God, one no longer speaks of God. The consensus is that the divine is a construct so great and mortal perception so small and flawed, that we would be unable to discuss the divine without tainting it within the confines of our limited understanding. When we look at the divine feminine, what it means to be a woman, and how our understanding and acceptance of womanhood directly correlates to the notion of ‘self-annihilation’ as a means for ‘self-preservation’. We must reorient the discussion, foregrounding contextual relevance, where ‘location’ of socio-cultural discourse matters and how artworks within the khaleeji[1] sphere flirt with shifting landscapes, dealing with the wonder, chaos and truth at the fringes of feminine consciousness. In this essay, it will use the As We Gaze Upon Her exhibition artworks to dissect the question of self-annihilation and the aftermath of displaying such relics. The exhibition was held one year ago, in October 2021 at Warehouse 421, Abu Dhabi. After it ran its course and the dust settled, the exhibition beckoned a moment of reflection. A reflection that would ponder on the significance of such an exhibition against the milieu of feminine virility. The unfurling of their shared experiences, battling the mutable gaze, a self-appointed mould by which the narratives of the women exhibited in that sphere were melted down and recrafted—often written for them and about them but not by them. There was a desire at the time to uncover the artworks’ ability to amplify and explore the feminine experience, the selection of artworks taken as case studies and whether the exhibition has rendered the subject of womanhood as reclaimed. But, on an ontological level, we must call into question whether it was even possible to shift and reclaim such a narrative. One year has passed and this reflection signals ‘...the subject of annihilation is a more profound kind of unknowability.[2] Speaking of God while no longer speaking of God, as it were.
Where the gaze is both an awareness of - and a projected reflection of – self. There are various stages in which one must self-annihilate in order to reach salvation, and in this case, an ability to strip away, as described in Marguerite Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls is the only way to reach the divine and make true change. She states, “So one must crush oneself, hacking and hewing away at oneself to widen the place in which Love will want to be.”[4] So how does the process of self-annihilation take place in favour of a new normal? How to negate the existing structure through the negation of the self? Does the truth of overriding the current structures in art only reside in self-sacrifice? As We Gaze Upon Her embarked on a journey, challenging the discarded bitten apple while simultaneously dripping honey to satisfy the eager masses. A push and pull of public opinion. How much do we rely on contemporary culture to cushion the fall from grace if the societal tête-à-tête is still stigmatised or seen as cultural taboo? The artworks within the exhibition, after all, acted as the mouthpiece, exploring the various ways one regards, and in turn, is regarded.
The artists’ mission, whether they intended or not, was to catastrophize all the preconceived notions of what we know to be true. There is a cultural dismantling of gazes, refracting and reflecting our – often flawed - understanding of the feminine experience. The artists reclaimed a narrative long controlled by others and gifted us with an intimate, unapologetic viewpoint. Through their eyes, we were able to resist the destructive effects of society’s need to assign base corporeality to women while granting free mindfulness to Other. This is a heavy burden to bear, but the importance of such an exhibition encouraged the audience to embark on an unpredictable shift in the mindset that has been set for so long. The larger question at hand is whether or not this shift actually created an alternative way of viewing art practice in womanhood. The anxiety of unfulfilled expectations, now disassociated from social, colonial, patriarchal, and cultural confinements, elevated the consciousness of the woman outside of herself and allowed her to go in search of new, freer forms.
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In this short reflective essay, it will act as a visual ontology to the art culture legacy of womanhood within the dominant epistemologies of both the art sphere and public opinion, essentially, the aftermath or ripple of the artworks’ effect within the public sphere. It will be a skipstone into wider discussions but for now, they will be analysed as reference points. The overarching point is that if the eyes are the window to the soul, then surely the mouth is a gateway, our voices an invitation. As Nietzsche described the abyss, the artworks instructed to view the abyss not as an entity separate from itself but as a mirror by which it judges social, cultural, patriarchal and structural hegemonies. In the exhibition, Farwa Moledina cleans away the moniker forcefully assigned to the divine feminine through a use of light and sheer fabric. Moledina had taken oriental imagery of the sensual female form and recrafted it into a piece that defies stereotypes. Her reimagining of the Muslim woman is in open defiance of any daring to reduce the feminine body to just an alluring component. As those living in the khaleej know all too well, the sexualisation of the female form speaks to conversations surrounding the topic of the body as a vessel and at the same time, by creating such an ethereal piece that utilises shadows, light, and even the very air in the room, Moledina revamped that commercialised version of sexuality into a small part of a whole rather than the sum of all a woman is or could be. A solution to an existing problem that otherwise wouldn’t have been discussed in such a confrontational way, presenting new possibilities for feminism and holds them accountable for any failure to do so. In the UAE, this artwork served as a byproduct in fostering an identity by seizing ownership of a woman's relationship with her body, with her own gaze, and the power and authority she subsequently gifts to both. As textiles were used amongst many artists in the exhibition, similarly to Moledina, Suleika Mueller’s enlarged photograph juxtaposed the structural integrity of folded cloth against the physical integrity of the body. She abdicated her physical form and therefore abandoned the responsibility of the guilt and objectification that society demands. The model in the photograph was without identity, straight-backed and uncompromised. By the simple act of utilising the same material for the background that was used on the body, Mueller creates a sort of camouflage. It was impossible to tell by pose or otherwise whether the figure under the sheet was female, and within that anonymity was a strength that stood out despite the lack of contrasting sightlines or colours. So perhaps, these artworks positioned the embodiment of temptation and deception for those unprepared to gaze upon her, though even that won’t necessarily save her from a second branding. The figure was both boldly presented – unhesitant to take up space through the very act of being - and yet lost to the annals of history. Seen only through fabrics and never clearly. A lesson we have learned all too well as the fetishisation of the female body, experience, rituals, and creativity has been a point of contention across a multitude of cultures yet is ever-potent in the khaleej.
The physical form is just as important to question but it is also within performativity of the form that we can examine womanhood. In the masquerading feminine archetype, we call into question WANASA society on how patriarchy wields the male gaze as a weapon, compelling women to wear masks to find their place within the hierarchy that it subsequently establishes. But it is women like Saba Askari who have taken what began as a tool of subjugation and alchemised it into one of survival. To many, Askari’s work may have initially presented itself as a white flag of surrender. Upon closer inspection we found discarded wipes as a physical reminder of days spent creating new, unflawed, versions of herself; thus, erasing the woman beneath for the comfort of her presumed audience. This piece cemented such a reflection as it touched on a ritualistic habit, something that fed into the everyday encounter. An act of leisure, defiance, but also a form of destruction to beautification standards.
With her hand-made ceramic plates, bowls, and glasses, Rania Jishi found agency through that destruction. Offering yet another perspective of the home as it related to women and the patriarchy. Jishi’s snapshot of a woman’s life through the dysfunction of a fragmented dinner table questioned the authority of men in the home and bore witness to simple household activities as instruments of oppression and unfilled expectation. All of which are served to viewers through painted words, statements, and confessions imposed directly on the ceramics. The plates serve as an untouched sanctity of misogyny and objectification by separating identity from form and vice versa. Their placement highlighted the uncomfortable reality that the male gaze often strips us of our individuality – and by proxy our humanity -- in the quest for physical dominance. The vigour of such a direct confrontation was to hack away at the dominance, but the last effects were not as forceful. This is because the subversion of the gaze does not only relate to a reorientation of the self, but agency in the annihilation. The annihilation takes shape by creating a form of disassociation, that the woman is seen as a relic or some form of object.
Donna Haraway claims that the understanding of object in the form of objectivity is not through a monolith’s gaze, but rather through a multitude of historical and contextual points, she writes, ‘...object of knowledge be pictured as an actor and agent, not as a screen or a ground or a resource, never finally as slave to the master…”[5], what Haraway was referring to was how women have been regarded as objects of history rather than producers of historical knowledge and wisdom. In that, Tala Worrell’s paintings take us on a brief departure from subjectivity to objectivity. Her art speaks to the putrid nature of play and the movement of emotions through gaps and orifices. The disordered subjectivity cuts a patterned objectivity on canvas - confronting brushstrokes of vivid magenta, cadmium, and mars black accents - challenging viewers to imagine a colour and scattered compositional approach to their idea of ‘woman’, this is seen through the chaotic and unpredictability of womanhood - bereft of physical form – is reminiscent of turmoil and a lack of control, but there is a harmony and weight that runs much deeper. We find order within the chaos, granting everything its own subjectivity. As the mysticism of women must be reduced to nothing and merge into the divine without remainder, only then can the reshaping of the identity take place. Evar Hussayni brought a vulnerability and softness to the narrative of the Kurdish woman through an intimate unveiling of their everyday lives. With a history of being seen as war-stricken and resilient, the Kurdish woman had fallen victim to an all too familiar trope. If not subservient then depicted as a destroyer, a harbinger of death and fear, Hussayni had allowed her subjects to bypass the archetype and step directly into a palatable gaze outside themselves. Hussayni, through archival photographs, gracefully re-presented women of the diaspora as creatures of joy – effectively shattering the mantle of expectations established by patriarchal prejudice through annihilation of the resistance. Mashael Alshaei’s “Aroosa,” was a visual scorn of petroleum politics in relation to the geopolitical landscape of the Arab female body. The departure from Haraway’s understanding of the body being the primary site of objectification outside of a historical relic. Alshaei’s film depicted the performative rituals of the wedding night through the mechanical motion of oil machines, complicating technocratic, transhumanist approaches to bodily emancipation. Images of machines digging into the earth are interposed over those implying the loss of innocence, that left the audience with the bitter taste of exploitation on their tongue. The ‘sanctity’ of marriage was a weapon used to pillage - the redness of their innocence a commodity to be bottled and sold. Alshaei is both woman grown, and blood spilled, briefly losing herself in the smoke of the battle that took place over the ownership of her. The video faded to black, leaving the audience with a haunting memory of red string tying knots in delicate white lace. The caricature of womanhood, the false idol, and for now, she is all that remains, a void in history outside of both subjectivity and objectivity.
A direct harnessing of the Emirati experience was through Maitha Hamdan as she explored the Emirati parody of the mundane with the use of ice cream as a motif. She challenged the long-held assumption that the physical act of eating an ice cream cone was obscene, which is just one of many of the small ways that the male eye have over-sexualised acts that would otherwise be deemed harmless and normal. The process of shoving it through her veil in clear disregard of who might be watching or the mess that may come of her handling of it is a declaration of war; those unable or unwilling to subvert their gaze, must learn to endure it. Aliyah Al Awadhi also explores a form and gaze we don’t often see. Her painted narrative challenges the notion of the domestic space as protective of women’s purity. She confronts the home as a place of masculine virility, where women become objects of desire and temptation. In the liminal space of the home, femininity appears in its duality. Nudity, here, is not for the male gaze but an articulation of feminine autonomy and self-formation. The use of space in Al Awadhi’s triptych creates a deep visual language within the canvas, an aesthetic force of biting marks and colour blocking against silhouettes. Attributing these strengths to ‘woman’ in a way that neither diminishes nor degrades. In many instances we find that female sexuality is the crux of a woman’s assumed monstrosity and moral ineptitude and punctuated intimate moments and affirms vulnerability as a powerful and divine act. A reality that Sharifa Horaiz chose to highlight through her exaggerated distortion of the female form. By expanding the limits of the classic bodily archetype - proportionality, idealisation, and beauty, she inhabits the liminal space of the grotesque to render socio-anatomical perfection. The sculpture’s protrusion of materiality in repetitive robust forms is nothing less than the body annihilated and then reimagined. In another light, this perceived anatomical perfection separates the anatomy from the identity of woman. The form resembles bulbous curvilinear forms cascading over one another, areoles like wounds threatening to consume the delicately marbled plinth stationed beneath. But again, the regurgitation of self-annihilation comes in even the most delicate of structures. All of which is showcased gracefully through Samar Hejazi’s installation. Hejazi’s work is one that transforms and entangles. The fragility of the threads juxtaposed by their cruel strength should the careless wander too close. It’s an interesting contrast with Moledina’s work, which utilised the weight and oppression of the cloth, stripped clean of any ornamentation or softness, to drive her point home. By removing the fabric that would drape the body and leaving the shapes and colours that would normally adorn that fabric, she transforms the textile motifs into representatives of structural and oppressive systems. Systems that shift and change at the slightest movement in the room, yet never lose their shape or forget their place.
To gaze upon the abyss is to invite it to gaze back. What is beauty for one, is sacrilege for another. Nothing we see is truth, but rather a collection of projected ideals, insecurities, and indoctrinations. To deny the feminine collective the chance to gaze upon itself sans influence invites the monstrous and encourages the grotesque. By having such an exhibition, it cascaded the regaining of autonomy and agency within the feminine diaspora to where we can one day shatter the mirror we’ve been forced to uphold. ‘Woman’ on her never-ending pilgrimage through the collective unconscious. It is an unwelcome weight on her skin, like the predatory eyes that often accompany it. It trails across the vessel, dipping into shadowed, private places where it burrows deep and hungers. It has no home upon her, within her, but it lingers, nonetheless. To self-annihilate in favour of a new normal that came and went is to continuously sacrifice into the abyssal negation of the soul. Because of the nature of the artworks rattling the cages of preconceived ideologies, that womanhood must exist under rigid structures, self-annihilation is the negation of the negation to which nothingness is subjugated. Philosopher Simone Weil deems such a negation as ‘decreation’ as a way to “undo the creature in us,”[6] as the undoing of the self, surrendering self for the latter by way of the former. But the ripple effect of such a self-sacrificial process in hopes of a shift in the art sphere. It was a refraction more so than a reflection, as these works, whether they intended or not, provided a cultural aversion to the consumption necessary to call into question the gazes. Only then will there be long lasting effects that ripple over time. Although the exhibition’s reminiscence called for such a visceral form of self-annihilation, it might, paradoxically, offer a path toward self-preservation. A stain that attempted to be washed away; it leaves her voice as an echo - speaking of woman while no longer speaking of woman.
Image reference:
1. Farwa Moledina, No one is neutral here. 2019. Digital print on fabric.
2. Suleika Mueller, Underneath My Cloth. 2019. Digital print on paper.
3. Saba Askari, Untitled (Shelter, Flag). 2019. Used makeup wipes, thread and aluminium pole.
4. Rania Jishi, Dinner Is Served. 2021. Hand-painted ceramics.
5. Tala Worrell, Piss and Vinegar. 2020. Oil on canvas.
6. Evar Hussayni, “av û nan hevpar e di nav me de, tu xwişka min î û ez xwişka te me” (water and bread split between us - you are my sister and i am your sister). 2018 - Ongoing. Digital print and archival photographs.
7. Mashael Alsaie, Aroosa “Bride”. 2020. Video, colour, sound and projection.
8. Maitha Hamdan, Precautions. 2020. Video and colour.
9. Aliyah Alawadhi, Psychic Impotence. 2021. Acrylic on canvas.
10. Sharifa Horaiz, Seated Figure on Pedestal. 2021. Scented wax, construction foam, synthetic hair, paint, polycrylic, and marble.
11. Samar Hejazi, Transgressed Boundaries. 2020. Thread and rose-tinted mirror.
Reference:
[1] Friedich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886), Chapter 4.
[2] ‘Khaleeji (meaning ‘of the Gulf’ in Arabic) denotes a socio-political regional identity that is shared by citizens of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states.’ Gaith Abdulla, Khaleeji Identity in Contemporary Gulf Politics, Identity & Culture in the 21st Century Gulf (2016).
[3] Elvia Wilk, The Word Made Fresh: Mystical Encounter and the New Weird Divine (2018) E-Flux Journal #92, accessed 30 March 2022, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/92/205298/the-word-made-fresh-mystical-encounter-and-the-new-weird-divine/
[4] Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls (1927), chapter 118.
[5] Donna Haraway, Situated Knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective, Feminist Studies, (1988), page 591.
[6] Anne Carson, Decreation: How Women Like Sappho, Marguerite Porete, and Simone Weil Tell God. Common Knowledge 1 April 2019; 25 (1-3): 204–219. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-7299306