Veil: Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art

“Veil. The word alone conjures up images in the mind’s eye. In the aftermath of September 11, the veil has become synonymous with cultural and religious differences that have been presented to us repeatedly as unbridgeable, alien and terrifying. The fact that the veil and veiling have been a part of both Western and Eastern cultures for millennia, from the aristocratic women of ancient Greece to contemporary brides worldwide, has not diminished their overwhelming association with Islam and an abstract, exoticized notion of the East. This project was conceived long before the events of September 11. The concept of Zineb Sedira, it was researched and developed by Sedira and Jananne Al-Ani over a period of four years, and emerges directly from their practice as visual artists. 

Veil is a major exhibition and publication that brings together the work of twenty contemporary international artists of Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds whose work explores the symbolic significance of the veil and veiling in contemporary culture. Curated by Al-Ani and Sedira with David A. Bailey and Gilane Tawadros, 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. Just as, in recent years, there has been a trend in contemporary visual arts to re-examine the representation of the Other in contemporary art and popular culture, a number of contemporary practitioners, generally – but not exclusively – with connections to the Middle East and North Africa or other parts of the Muslim world, are producing a growing body of work that addresses the representation of the veil. Despite the abundance of academic work which explores Orientalism as a system of knowledge and belief, a structure by which Europe illustrates its cultural and political superiority over the Orient, little has been done in exploring the particular representation of the veil in historical and contemporary visual art. And yet, no single item of clothing has had more influence on Western images of Middle Eastern and North African women than the veil. For the first time in the history of curatorial and exhibition practice, this project extends the possible interpretations of the veil and explores the ambiguities articulated in recent and contemporary practice rather than presenting a polemical or academic thesis.”

From ‘Veil: Veiling Representation and Contemporary Art’, written with the curator David A. Bailey and originally published as the introduction to David A. Bailey and Gilane Tawadros (eds), Veil: Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art, published by Iniva, London, in association with Modern Art Oxford, 2006. The book accompanied an exhibition of the same name which was conceived by the artist Zineb Sedira and researched and developed by Sedira with the artist Jananne Al-Ani. The curatorial team which selected and commissioned the new works for the exhibition comprised Sedira, Ani, David A. Bailey and Tawadros. The exhibition was conceived and developed before the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City in 2001 and opened at the New Art Gallery, Walsall in 2003 amidst some controversy when the works by the AES Group were censored by Walsall City Council, which responded to the concerns of council workers at the Gallery who considered the works ‘unpatriotic’ on the eve of the Iraq War. Participating artists were: Faisal Abdu’Allah, Kourush Adim, AES art group, Jananne Al-Ani, Ghada Amer, Farah Bajull, Samta Benyahia, Gaëtan de Clérambault, Marc Garanger, Shadafarin Ghadirian, Ghazel, Emily Jacir, Ramesh Kalkur, Majida Khattari, Shirin Neshat, Harold Offeh, Gillo Pontecorvo, Zineb Sedira, Elin Strand, Mitra Tabrizian.