Art, Gender, and Muslim American Identity

Two artists, one from Pakistan living in Queens and the other the child of Iranian immigrants living in New Jersey, in a conjoined show grapple with what it means to be Muslim, American, and women through their art. See the somewhat lengthy, but very interesting NYTimes article:

In Pakistan Ms. Ahmed Shikoh’s work had been sociopolitical, addressing what she saw as the country’s colonization by American fast-food chains, for instance, with paintings like “The Invasion,” in which swarms of Ronald McDonalds, wearing screaming-red clown wigs, surround a central monument in Karachi.

Here, however, her art turned deeply personal as she grappled with her new identity as an immigrant and, having rarely set foot in a mosque back home, as a gradually more observant Muslim. In her first American paintings Ms. Ahmed Shikoh reimagined the Statue of Liberty in her own image: in a Pakistani wedding dress, as a pregnant immigrant and as a regal mother, baby on hip. Next she transformed the subway map with paint and calligraphic script into an Urdu manuscript that made the city feel more like hers.

Finally, in 2006, after she made the difficult decision to cover her hair, inspired by Muslim-American women who managed to combine faith and a career, Ms. Ahmed Shikoh began using the head scarf as a recurring image.

....

In contrast Ms. [Negar] Ahkami’s piece is playful, acerbic and polished. It consists of eight nesting dolls sumptuously repainted as “Persian Dolls,” in brilliant colors with gold faces. The outer doll is stern, with a thick unibrow, in full black chador. The ever smaller dolls within wear Chanel head scarves or cocktail dresses or, as with the tiniest, nothing at all but curves.

“I have always struggled with the images of humorless, somber Iranian women in full-on black chador,” Ms. Ahkami said. “For me these images do not reflect the real Iranian women any more than the images of the harem girls of the 19th century did.”

....

Although “Persian Dolls” is a sculpture, Ms. Ahkami is primarily a painter, of elaborate narrative tableaus in which she combines a Persian aesthetic with the psychological rawness of Western art.

....

Eventually, as Ms. Ahkami spent time at artist residencies, earned a master’s degree in fine arts, married and had a child, she forged a signature style by combining these impulses toward “the visceral and the refined,” in her words. Formally Ms. Ahkami borrows from Persian art but turns up the heat, making the colors more electric and the juxtaposition of swirls and patterns more “cacophonous,” as she put it. She also adds textures with glitter, primer and layers of paint.

Over time Ms. Ahkami has developed a vocabulary of icons: turbaned despots, melting mosques and exotic women with what she calls “Western fetishes” like feathery “Farrah Fawcett hair.” In her large canvases she sets miniature stories within the central narrative, as in “The Fall,” the whimsical centerpiece of her first solo Manhattan show, held in March at the Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery.

At 5 by 4 feet “The Fall” depicts streams of Iranians in exodus from a paradisiacal homeland in meltdown, traveling past Persianate horsemen over hills patterned like Persian rugs on the way to an uncertain — but consumerist — future.

Their work and the work of 13 other artists, can be seen in their exhibition, “The Seen and the Hidden: [Dis]Covering the Veil,” at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Manhattan.

Legal Insensitivity to Religious Customs

I just read the following from the Associated Press. A judge in Georgia jailed a Muslim woman who refused to remove her head scarf in court. The court rules are that no headgear is allowed at all, which would, in this case, create a religious violation.

Ga. judge jails Muslim woman over head scarf
By DIONNE WALKER, Associated Press Writer Dionne Walker, Associated Press Writer
19 mins ago

ATLANTA – A Georgia judge ordered a Muslim woman arrested Tuesday for contempt of court for refusing to take off her head scarf at a security checkpoint.

The judge ordered Lisa Valentine, 40, to serve 10 days in jail, said police in Douglasville, a city of about 20,000 people on Atlanta's west suburban outskirts.

Valentine violated a court policy that prohibits people from wearing any headgear in court, police said.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations urged federal authorities to investigate the incident as well as others in Georgia.

"I just felt stripped of my civil, my human rights," Valentine told The Associated Press on Wednesday from her home, after she said she was unexpectedly released once CAIR got involved. Jail officials declined to say why she was freed.

Municipal Court Judge Keith Rollins said that "it would not be appropriate" for him to comment on the case.

Last year, a judge in Valdosta in southern Georgia barred a Muslim woman from entering a courtroom because she would not remove her head scarf. There have been similar cases in other states, including Michigan, where a Muslim woman in Detroit filed a federal lawsuit in February 2007 after a judge dismissed her small-claims court case when she refused to remove a head and face veil.

Valentine's husband, Omar Hall, said his wife was accompanying her nephew to a traffic citation hearing when officials stopped her at the metal detector and told her she would not be allowed in the courtroom with the head scarf, known as a hijab.

Hall said Valentine, an insurance underwriter, told the bailiff that she had been in courtrooms before with the scarf on and that removing it would be a religious violation. When she turned to leave and uttered an expletive, Hall said a bailiff handcuffed her and took her before the judge.

So, basically, because of this court's procedural customs, these women cannot get a fair hearing. Sometimes it seems the law, or at least this particular court's procedure, gets in the way of justice.