Feminist artists, writers rage in ‘F213’ exhibition in San Francisco
Muslim presence, one of the most racially and ethnically diverse religious groups in the USA, has been a hunting one not only at the time of colonial imperialism but also at the establishment of modern and secular states. Throughout the history of the encounter between East and West, Islam’s and Muslim presence has been painted as the antithesis of progress, civilization, peace, modernism, rationality, subjectivity, and free will whether by hegemonic Western colonial forces or by the westernized internal forces. The demonization of Islam and Muslims hasn’t been ceased today, in fact, after 9/11 it has become the shaping political force in the American political system which is paved the way for the emergence of nationalist, right-wing politics, and for the on-going hate crimes against Muslims in general but more precisely against Muslims that are born in USA or Muslims that inhibit in both cultures. If the campaign of the Trump administration has achieved one thing that has been the trigger it has pushed the American Muslim community to reclaim their own narrative, history, faith, subjectivity, and their place in which community they live in. Rather than defending themselves, they are defining their own norms without needing to give an apology.
As the Muslim agencies have become more vocal and politically active, the public and political institutions have become more involved with Muslim identity and its various traditions and discourse. Even though the increased Islamophobia leads to unspeakable violence of human rights, harassment on a daily- base, and a constant state of insecurity and threats in the Muslim psyche, the resistance of young generation Muslims to own and control their own narratives have reached out the institutions. One of the fascinating examples of this is, now international performance project founded by European … called ‘Hijabi Monologues’ inspired and named after the pioneer feminist performance “Vagina Monologues’ by Eve Ensler. Another recent example is, one of the pioneering art spaces in the Bay Area, De Young Museum’s “Contemporary Muslims Fashions” taking place between September 22, 2018, and January 6, 2019, that explores the multifaceted history of Muslim modest clothing. Naqsa Naveed is one of those activists/ artists who, in her works, aims at eliminating the antagonistic, hegemonic, colonial, Western assumptions on Muslim women and at eliminating the sexist, misogynist, and patriarchal structures within Islamic and Western culture.
Naqsa, born in Pakistan, and raised in California, is a newly-graduated desi feminist with a bachelor of science in Media Arts and Animation. My path with Naqsa, more precisely with her art, took place upon an invitation from The Northern California Women's Caucus for Art (NCWCA)[1] for their curatorial exhibition “Fahrenheit 213”, one degree above the boiling point of blood, that will take place next year in April. The exhibition brings diverse feminist artist and writers together who are enraged by the Trump administration and its policies that trigger LGBTIA discrimination, environmental exploitation, sexism, islamophobia, racism, white supremacy, misogyny, xenophobia, and relentless wrongdoings at borders in order to create a space for a counter-public to emerge, to praise feminist protest and to unite against the atrocities of the current administration. The provocativeness of the exhibition comes from the fact F213 is a collaborative project of multicultural, intersectional, multigenerational feminists around nearly a hundred artists, and writers, Bay Area based as well as national, in doing so, it defies making of feminist solidarity that is build up from a monolithic and centered standpoint. Therefore, its main aim is to build anti-racist, and intersectional feminist political alliances within and outside of the art scene to resist against the racism ingrained institutional, public and private spheres, against hegemonic and normative power structures, and to resist against patriarchies, against corruption, and social injustice. You all might ask in which intersection Aqsa’s art and I – as the writer of that art piece- come to intersect, by which frame we come to build up a feminist alliance.
Aqsa Naveed[2], is a Bay Area-based Pakistani-American artist, illustrator, and instructor, creates pop art-inspired illustrations that depict diverse desi Muslim women, some are in veil and others are not, in a way that defies the stereotype of Muslim women as a submissive, alienated, oppressed, and victimized objects who are sentenced from the earthly, sexual, political, sensual pleasures, who are the prisoners in their own body. Her characters, mostly in close-ups, taking up the center, manifest their subjectivity, being sure that she is recognized by the on-looker. In her subversive depictions of Muslim female identity, Aqsa’s background as a visible Muslim – by the mark of her hijab- growing up in the USA during the tense political climate of the 9/11 attacks when Muslim identity is marked by the heinous attacks as the worst thing that has ever happened to nation’s history, and her entanglement in two distinct cultures plays an important role in shaping her critical artistic approach at both culture’s patriarchal, hegemonic, sexists, and misogynist traditions. By inserting speech balloons, or else, by the captions she posts with her artworks, she is making sure that no one else will speak for these women as each asserts their own feminist statements such as “Hypermasculinity is toxic and perpetuates unhealthy society” or “I sure do love having random men yell obscene words at me.”
When I received her artwork through an e-mail that is attached to the invitation, I wondered why I was matched with this specific artist? What was in the mind of committee members that made them think we both can make a good match/alliance taking into account that even though I was raised in a Muslim family I have never really felt that Islam or any other religious doctrines fit me or that I actually migrated from Turkey because of the Religious State of Mr. Erdogan’s regime that has been committing a whole range of crimes from state corruption to the displacement of millions of Kurdish people, from imprisonment and criminalization of oppositional agencies to murders, impoverishment, violation of human/ animal/ environmental rights, that has been ongoing on Turkey for the last 15 years. Then, I recalled what was also happened in those 15 years was something that we were quickly forgotten; removing the ban on the veil at state institutions in my home country, where ironically the Muslim population constitutes the majority. In the midst of recent state terrors, our memories have long passed that moment of hard-won freedom to mourn our own losses.
NiqaBan, the artist’s first artistic and political contribution to the exhibition, is in response to the Quebec Niqab ban that was proposed and passed in October of 2017 in Canada. Its real purpose was to ban Muslim women from wearing niqabs or face veils when they provide or receive public service due to security concerns. Two months later after its passing, a Quebec judge suspended this law in December 2017, however, the hijab and the Muslim women's body have remained as the hot topic of discussion as it was, and ever has been throughout the history of colonialism, modernism, secularism, and religion. NiqaBan is a close-up illustration of a niqabi woman looking at her mobile phone and reacting against something that she has just read on her phone. She is extracted from an ongoing scene, the soft orange background and the purple of her veil are the dominant colors in the visual. She is not in the center but the bubble, in other words, the signifier of her intellectual presence takes up the center. It is almost a visual statement of this woman who wants to be seen more than what she wears, what her choices of clothes but to be seen for her reaction, even her anger, her intellect, her subjectivity. In the center, the spectator reads “Since when banning a veil ever solved any real political problems?”, she is not looking at us, her gaze is upon her phone, thus, we know that we intrude on her thoughts, it is not she is asking us a question but she is stating that banning a veil is never solved any problems in history. She is pointing out to us to reflect on the history of Muslim women, the history of the veil. Throughout history, many attempts to erase the veil as one of the public marks of Muslim identity have been applied not only by imperial or colonial forces, as in French colonial forces imposed in Algeria, but also by the secular and modern political forces, as in Turkey's secularization and westernization politics imposed just until 2013. Yet none of them could maintain their force against the resilience of the Muslim feminist movements that have sought what’s theirs, to practice their freedom of religion, meanwhile to remain as the rightful members of their community.
Although the veil isn’t necessarily practiced only within the Islam and Islamic traditions and cultures, the practice of veiling is almost always associated with Muslim females, and has come to serve as a convenient visual shorthand of the Orient, thus, her inevitable oppression and forced submission in the Eurocentric epistemology and imagination. In Orientalism, Said[3] explains how East played a crucial role in creating the East as its Other, its contrasting values, images, and orders, and the concept of Orientalism by which Western, particularly European colonizers historically constructed the East as exotic, strange, subjugated, exciting, dangerous, silenced, tamed, to be exhibited, and to be liberated. Construction of East’s backwardness and oppression has come to be negotiated on the female body; in doing so, the veil as a historically constructed site is used for ensuring the West’s progress, invasion of and intervention in the Muslim world and Muslim female bodies. The discourse of the veil has been used to separate those who belong and who are not to the Eurocentric patriarchal universalism of Western white men, where the superiority of thought, Western life, and existence sweeps over, discarding other ways of thinking, being, and being in the world. Therefore, the act of unveiling and the discourse of emancipation come to signify not only the emancipation and progression of the Muslim female body but also to signify the secularization and westernization of the East. As Yegenoglu[4] puts “the colonial desire to unveil the Muslim woman’s body is not only linked with the discourse of Enlightenment, but coincides with the emergence of the “scopic regime of modernity.” A regime that she explains as “a desire to master, control, and reshape the body of the subjects by making them visible. Since the veil prevents the colonial gaze from attaining such a visibility and hence mastery, it’s lifting becomes essential.” (57-60)
The discourse of emancipation of Muslim female and the supremacy of white patriarchal male is also subject of Aqsa’s second contribution to F213‘Make America Ignorant Again” which is in response to the 2016 Election Campaign that spurred the "Make America Great Again" implying that the United States of America was once great. Once more not the figures themselves but the statements take up the visual’s focal point. A subject is a white man who is drawn in Trump’s infamous campaign hat, pointing out his finger in a threatening gesture and speaking with authority to a Muslim woman. Three balloons in the center yell out incomplete statements discarding her subjectivity, traditions, culture such as “If you marry me I won’t make you wear that…” or else “that chicken karma gave me Diarrhea for a week.” For she is not looking toward us, her face is semi-visible for the on-looker, thus, we cannot read her reaction. She is in hold yet she is not passive in any meaning. She looks at him in the eyes quietly meanwhile she stands in her position firmly. She uses her gaze and body as a shield against the threatening presence of the white male, in doing so, she defies the western assumptions on Muslim females as submissive and obedient. By standing/positioning against him, her body becomes a means of resistance. Maybe not thorough words but she speaks within her stance and her body unfolds to the words and verses…
Oh, my body!
our earthly presence,
the battleground of all hypocrisies
Look how much trouble we have caused in the mind of white patriarchs.
How many times our bodies are policed, and our choices are scrutinized by Western ideologies that have been fighting over our bodies to claim submissiveness, oppression, weakness, and lack of subjectivity in Muslim women so that they – the invincible savior and supreme benevolent- can reclaim our liberation. Yet, despite their paternalistic attempt to liberate Muslim women, when in their bell jar, they are woken by their nightmare of our own resistance and resilience. Recall those countless moments when your presence revealed the mask behind the free world where freedom is only entitled to hegemonic Western life and existence, modes of thinking, being, and being in the world.
Oh, my body!
Stand against the sense of smugness in the white male ideology and hegemonic Western feminisms, knowing that Muslim women throughout history have been fighting against imperial colonialism, against Western and Muslim patriarchs, against the racism of Western epistemology, against the patriarchal interpretations of Islam, and against sexism, misogyny, and xenophobia. Oh, my body! take a stance, and be proud because since the dawn of the time we were, we are, and we shall be.
Listen to hear her. Only then maybe we might be able to build inclusive, intersectional, thus, meaningful feminist alliances. And this is what all matters now, in the midst of this great despair and agony that since 2016 fills the air we have been breathing.
[1] “The Northern California Women's Caucus for Art (NCWCA)
https://www.ncwca.org/
[2] Aqsa Naveed
https://www.instagram.com/aqsasqa/?hl=en
[3] Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (New York, Pantheon Books, 1978)
[4] Meyda Yegenoglu, Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1998)