Art Fix Friday: May 13, 2016

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Britain’s 2016 Turner Prize announced Anthea Hamilton, Helen Marten, and Josephine Pryde among the prize’s four shortlisted artists. The Turner prize grants £25,000 to the winner.

The Guardian highlights standout works by the shortlisted artists, including Josephine Pryde’s large-scale model freight train and Anthea Hamilton’s cut-out figures with a live ant farm.

Front-Page Femmes

The New York Times interviews Grace Dunham and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Nicole Eisenman. The New Yorker admires Al-ugh-ories, Eisenman’s retrospective of 22 paintings and three sculptures at the New Museum.

Hyperallergic admires Lee Krasner’s “uncompromising toughness.”

Madame De Pompadour, King Louis XV’s chief mistress, was also an artist, tastemaker, and patron of the arts.

Yayoi Kusama will redecorate one London-based Airbnb apartment for free.

Ilma Gore, known for her controversial nude painting of Donald Trump, was physically attacked.

Silk tapestries by Billie Zangewa explore narratives about women in South Africa.

In an essay for Hyperallergic, sculptor Barbara Zucker reflects on her meetings with Georgia O’Keeffe.

Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi was found guilty of obscenity in Japan for publishing data to 3D print a replica of her vagina.

Thirty-five years after documenting female subculture style in London, Anita Corbin tracked down her original subjects.

Dutch wildlife artist Esther van Hulsen paints with 95-million-year-old octopus ink.

Nigerian artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby tells complicated stories about Africa, colonialism, and her life.

Hyperallergic charts the fascinating life of 18th-century portraitist Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun.

Martine Syms says, “I think [art] changes discourse, and discourse can change ideas, and for me that’s what it’s about: having that space for conversation.”

Mariko Kusumoto makes wearable balloon-like objects containing playful sculptural forms like sea creatures and cars.

Chiharu Shiota’s surreal site-specific installation Conscious Sleep is one of the most talked-about works of the 2016 Sydney Biennale.

Photojournalist Mary Ellen Mark captured circus life, troubled youth, and life on the streets.

Kathryn Andrews situates her work “against the conceptual and pictorial backdrop of a fictitious presidential election.”

Grimes released an alternate version of the song California.

Zarqa Nawaz discusses her sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie and her memoir Laughing All The Way to the Mosque.

The Atlantic interviews Emma Ramadan about the possibilities and limitations of writing without gender.

NPR interviews Jodie Foster about roles for strong women and why there aren’t more female directors.

Shows We Want to See

Jane Irish “reimagines the role of Renaissance ceiling paintings and insists that art can be simultaneously beautiful and political” in A Rapid Whirling at the Heel.

Comprised of plastic flowers and gold balls, Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes’s Gamboa II hangs in the Jewish Museum’s lobby.

A posthumous retrospective of Iranian artist Farideh Lashai’s five-decade career, “reflects her mood and perspective on the changing political situation in Iran.”

—Emily Haight is the digital editorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

5 Fast Facts: Elaine de Kooning

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Impress your friends with five fast facts about Abstract Expressionist artist Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989), whose work is on view in NMWA’s collection galleries.

1. Speed Demon

Elaine de Kooning had the reputation of being able to paint a full-length portrait in less than two hours.

2. Not-So-Still Life

Though primarily known for her portraiture, de Kooning also experimented with still life. She combined careful depictions of everyday objects with loosely painted, sketchy areas—imbuing the works with a sense of movement contrary to the static feeling of more traditional still-life paintings.

Elaine de Kooning, Bacchus #3, 1978; Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 78 in x 50 in x 2 1/4 in; NMWA, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay

Elaine de Kooning, Bacchus #3, 1978; Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 78 in x 50 in x 2 1/4 in; NMWA, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay

3. A Woman’s World

De Kooning first encountered art in reproductions by Rembrandt, Raphael, Rosa Bonheur, and Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun hung by her mother in de Kooning’s childhood home. This experience molded her artistic path. She said she “began life with the assumption that half the painters in the world were women.”

Visitors study Elaine de Kooning’s Bacchus #3; Photo: Dakota Fine

NMWA visitors study Elaine de Kooning’s Bacchus #3; Photo: Dakota Fine

4. Triple Threat

In addition to being a painter, de Kooning was also an esteemed writer and teacher. She became an editorial assistant for Art News in 1948 and taught at the University of New Mexico, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of California—Davis.

5. No Adjectives, Please

Not a fan of the term “woman artist,” de Kooning preferred to just be referred to as an artist. Once a man approached de Kooning and fellow abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell and asked, “What do you women artists think…” and they both walked away without responding.

—Marina MacLatchie was the fall 2015 education and digital engagement intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

She Who Tells a Story: Lalla Essaydi

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In Arabic, the word rawiya means “she who tells a story.” Each artist in NMWA’s summer exhibition She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World offers a vision of the world she has witnessed.

Lalla Essaydi

(b. 1956, Marrakesh, Morocco; lives New York)

Essaydi began her career as a painter—she developed an interest in photography first as a means of documenting her other work, and then, she says, “It became a medium I fell in love with.” She creates multilayered images that confront the historical Orientalism of Western artists, particularly sexualized depictions of North African and Middle Eastern women.

A NMWA visitor studies Lalla Essaydi’s work in She Who Tells a Story

A NMWA visitor studies Lalla Essaydi’s work in She Who Tells a Story

Her images often focus on a woman or small group of women whose clothing and bodies are decorated to match their surroundings. She uses henna—reclaiming the traditionally “male art of calligraphy”—to challenge gender dynamics within Moroccan and Arab cultures and between the East and West.

In Her Own Words

“When I was at school I made a huge Orientalist painting, and a curator from a museum was interested in it. When I tried to show her my other works, she had less enthusiasm. She only wanted the big fantasy. I started talking about the work, and she was surprised, she had thought the image was autobiographical. I was shocked that an expert in this area of art didn’t even know it was just a sexual fantasy.”

“From that moment, I knew I needed to do something. I am an Arab woman, and I don’t see myself in these paintings. A lot of people ask me why I choose to dwell on this issue, and it’s because it’s not solved.  It may not be about the odalisque now, but the odalisque is what later became the veiled female figure. If we don’t unveil that founding myth first, we cannot begin to address the rest.”—Lalla Essaydi, interview in ArtAsiaPacific

What’s On View?

Lalla Essaydi, Bullets Revisited #3, 2012; Triptych, chromogenic prints on aluminum, 150 x 66 in.; Courtesy of the artist, Miller Yezerski Gallery, Boston, and Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC

Lalla Essaydi, Bullets Revisited #3, 2012; Triptych, chromogenic prints on aluminum, 150 x 66 in.; Courtesy of the artist, Miller Yezerski Gallery, Boston, and Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC

The large-scale triptych Bullets Revisited #3 (2012), a set of chromogenic prints on aluminum, is in many ways characteristic of her work: it references Orientalism by depicting a woman lying down, and her body and clothing provide a canvas for henna calligraphy. In addition to henna, however, her surroundings are elaborately decorated with silver and golden bullet casings. With these, Essaydi evokes symbolic violence and restrictions on women.

The work’s visible black film borders emphasize the image’s artifice. It is large and visually lush, but Essaydi uses the borders, as well as the elaborate setup and deliberately abstracted, uninviting space, to underscore the fact that it does not reflect reality.

Visit the museum and explore She Who Tells a Story, on view through July 31, 2016.

—Elizabeth Lynch is the editor at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Art Fix Friday: May 6, 2016

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In the U.S. “only 27% of the 590 major solo shows organized by nearly 70 institutions between 2007 and 2013 were devoted to women.” The Art Newspaper outlines how influential donors, prizes for women, and diversifying museum leadership can help rectify the gender imbalance.

Helen Molesworth, the chief curator of MOCA, says that although the art world is progressive, “that doesn’t set us apart from the larger cultural forces at play, which have for the past several hundred years promoted the idea that genius and men and power and money are all very intertwined with one another.”

Front-Page Femmes

Marisol Escobar, known in the 1960s for her wooden Pop Art sculptures, died at the age of 85.

Adriana Varejão’s hand-painted tile mural covers Rio’s 2016 Summer Olympics aquatics stadium.

Tauba Auerbach makes a large, geometric pop-up book.

Mona Hatoum’s survey includes endoscopic video of her internal organs.

Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani was released from prison.

A fire at German artist Rosemarie Trockel’s home damaged and destroyed more than $30 million worth of art.

Cornelia Parker installed a Hitchcock-inspired barn on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Los Angeles Times traces 89-year-old artist Betye Saar‘s oeuvre through her recent and upcoming exhibitions.

Unnerving, surreal characters in Floria González’s photographs explore the impact of motherhood on her life.

Virginia-based teen Razan Elbaba uses photography to “break the stereotypes and significantly express the true goal of Muslim women.”

Art Basel visitors will help performance artist Alison Knowles toss a giant salad before it is served.

Heather Phillipson’s three-part installation for Frieze New York involves dog sculptures, video, trampolines, pillows and more.

The Guardian shares the @52museums Instagram project—highlighting one of NMWA’s posts.

“It’s so empowering for this generation to see a black ballerina doll that has muscles,” says Misty Copeland about the new Barbie made in her likeness.

NPR describes a new album by Anohni, formerly Antony Hegarty, as “a pop album that is simultaneously an act of dissent.”

Gabriela Burkhalter’s The Playground Project explores forgotten artistic playgrounds of the 20th century.

Sweet Lamb of Heaven, by Lydia Millet, is “an extraordinary metaphysical thriller.”

The New Yorker delves into two articles written by Harper Lee about the case that brought her to Kansas with Truman Capote.

The documentary Eva Hesse, structured around excerpts from her journals, provides a psychological portrait of the artist. Watch the trailer.

Shows We Want to See

Five women artists from the Electric Machete Studios collective locked themselves in their studio for 48 hours. The resulting works reflect the “complex identities of the women as feminists and artists.” Interventions: A Xicana & Boricua Guerrilla Perspective explores the relationship between art, feminism, and indigenous identity.

Abstract work by overlooked Victorian spiritualist Georgiana Houghton will be featured in London. The Guardian writes, “Houghton would host a seance, talk to her spirit guide and draw complex, colourful and layered watercolours.”

Carmen Herrera—now 101 years old—“distills painting to its purest elements.”

—Emily Haight is the digital editorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

She Who Tells a Story: Rana El Nemr

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In Arabic, the word rawiya means “she who tells a story.” Each artist in in NMWA’s summer exhibition She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World offers a vision of the world she has witnessed.

Rana El Nemr

(b. 1974, Hanover, Germany; lives Cairo)

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A NMWA visitor gazes at Metro (#7) in She Who Tells a Story

Primarily working with conceptual photography, Egyptian artist Rana El Nemr captures urban stories that focus on ideas of space, identity, and the sense of belonging. She is also a co-founder of the Contemporary Image Collective (CIC), a platform for contemporary Egyptian art.

In Her Own Words

“I try [in the series “The Metro”] to capture the riders’ response to the urban underground, the train, the station, and its vibrant ceramic designs. Riders become figures defined by form, line, and color in the midst of a congested modernity in which they no longer have a sense of place.”—Rana El Nemr

“When I was watching people and watching the space, I became very obsessed by how the space made the people, some of the people who are using the space, how it made them so absorbed, and so kind of out of their body’s presence in a way.”—Rana El Nemr, WGBH News

What’s On View?

In four images on view from her series “The Metro” (2003), El Nemr inconspicuously photographs passengers in the first car of Cairo’s subway, which is reserved for women and children. Her subjects are shown seated or standing, often absorbed in thought. Some riders are only glimpsed through the car’s windows, as seen in Metro (#7). Conveying the anonymity of city life, El Nemr’s subjects seem to be alienated. The artist describes them as “vulnerable to cycles of depression, indifference, and religious intolerance—illnesses that are both caused by, and transmitted to, the rest of Egyptian and Arab society and the world.”

Rana El Nemr, Metro (#7), from the series “The Metro,” 2003; Pigment print, 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum purchase with general funds and the Abbott Lawrence Fund, 2013.569; Photograph © 2015 MFA Boston

Rana El Nemr, Metro (#7), from the series “The Metro,” 2003; Pigment print, 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum purchase with general funds and the Abbott Lawrence Fund, 2013.569; Photograph © 2015 MFA Boston

El Nemr’s photographs record the rapid changes that middle-class Egyptians encounter in the megalopolis of Cairo. Her works convey the displacement and belonging that affect interactions between people and public space. Metro (#7) depicts the backs of two subway riders through the blue-and-white exterior of the car. The pairing of their black and white abayas, each framed by a window of the closed doors, demonstrates the artist’s eye for asymmetrical compositions.

Visit the museum and explore She Who Tells a Story, on view through July 31, 2016.

—Emily Haight is the digital editorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

A Housewife’s Ballet: Kirsten Justesen on Domesticity and Art

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Danish artist Kirsten Justesen’s oeuvre highlights her experience navigating her role as a woman and artist. Justesen (b. 1943) explores the links between female identity and gender roles, examining the limits women faced as they fulfilled Western society’s expectations to become housewives and mothers during the 1970s. Themes of freedom and struggle are pronounced in Justesen’s oeuvre. Her works examine how childcare and domestic duties impact the scope for expression. Even Justesen’s studio was positioned between the kitchen and the nursery—an “inspiring threshold” and physical illustration of her blended identity as an artist and a mother.

Image of Kirsten Justesen; Courtesy of Kirsten Justesen

Image of Kirsten Justesen; Courtesy of Kirsten Justesen

As a student at the Royal Danish Art Academy, Justesen helped pioneer the birth of the feminist art movement in Denmark. In 1970, Justesen joined a collective of women artists whose experimental art project, Damebilleder (“Women’s Images”), portrayed women’s role in society “from the beauty parlor to dish-washing.”

The group’s efforts challenged gender perceptions by focusing on female perspective and capturing women’s experiences through art.

Justesen explains, “My generation is brought up with the male gaze, a gaze that still seems synonymous with defining the history of art . . . we want our gaze back in history, to secure diversity.”

On view at NMWA, Justesen’s photograph Lunch for a Landscape (1975) portrays a jubilant, nude Justesen sitting in a shopping cart with her arms raised. Justesen said, “I made this when I was raising two small boys, breastfeeding the baby, and also living as a spouse in a foreign country [Canada]. I describe my life then as a daily ‘housewife ballet.’ Here, a housewife is on her way in the vehicle of her life.” Justesen juxtaposes a celebration of freedom with a traditional symbol of wifely duty—a grocery cart.

Kirsten Justesen, Lunch for a Landscape,1975/2009; Chromogenic print, 48 3/4 x 67 3/4 in; NMWA; Gift of Montana A/S, © Kirsten Justesen

Kirsten Justesen, Lunch for a Landscape,1975/2009; Chromogenic print, 48 3/4 x 67 3/4 in; NMWA; Gift of Montana A/S, © Kirsten Justesen

In Justesen’s own words, “through our upbringing we were defined as reproduction tools and were supposed to behave in order to find suitable husbands.” The core of the feminist art movement challenged the marginalization of women and the confines of strict gender roles. Justesen’s Lunch for a Landscape seems to imply that the adoption domestic duties does not mean giving up the desire for freedom. Works like the photograph on view at NMWA provided a voice for Justesen and enabled her to establish herself in the art world.

—Sophia Wu was the winter/spring 2016 publications and communications/marketing intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Art Fix Friday: April 29, 2016

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Beyoncé made headlines this week with the release of her latest visual album, Lemonade.

Quartz applauds Beyoncé’s collaboration with African artists Laolu Senbanjo and Warsan Shire while The New York Times explores Shire’s life and poetry further. Slate examines one scene where Beyoncé smashes a car window with a baseball bat, comparing it to Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s iconic video installation Ever Is Over All. NPR describes the album as “too much and not enough and gorgeous and mesmerizing and messy.”

Front-Page Femmes

Katharina Fritsch’s Hahn/Cock, a 14-foot blue chicken sculpture, will move from London to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Iranian artist Atena Farghadani, who was sentenced to more prison for drawing a satirical cartoon, was repeatedly forced to undergo virginity and pregnancy tests.

Three Yayoi Kusama installations will be on view at the Glass House in Connecticut.

Wrapped in paper, hanging from furniture, or bent in awkward yoga positions, photographer Polly Penrose captures herself in vulnerable poses.

Brazilian photographer Camila Fontenele de Miranda invites men, women, and children to pose like Frida Kahlo.

Reaching international stardom at the age of 72, Phyllida Barlow says late success is “enabling me to make work in a way I never thought in my wildest dreams I would be able to.”

Martine Syms discusses publishing, zine culture, and why she tries not to read anything online.

The Huffington Post shares work by 25 women who are pushing the limits of street art.

Nancy Nowacek starts a Kickstarter campaign for Citizen Bridge, a floating bridge to connect Brooklyn to Governors Island.

Swiss artist Manon Wertenbroek used her brother as a model for her series of cartoonish tableaux.

Painter June Leaf knows when a work is finished. She says, “I think the secret is honesty. The image has to hit you back.”

ARTnews goes behind-the-scenes of artist Amanda Ross-Ho’s Los Angeles warehouse-turned-studio.

Slate explores British author Helen Oyeyemi’s new short story collection, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours.

Sounds and Sweet Airs, by cultural historian Anna Beer, traces how women of classical music have been forgotten.

Actress Lupita Nyong’o tells NPR, “I think subconsciously I was excited by work . . . that was not about my body.”

Marcie Begleiter, the director of Eva Hesse, talks about why the documentary is overdue.

BBC pledges to fill half of their on screen, on air, and leadership roles with women by 2020.

Electronic artist Claire Boucher, known as Grimes, discusses gender politics, being a science major, and unsettling audio.

Shows We Want to See

Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour’s solo exhibition includes a sci-fi film that imagines a post-apocalyptic future for Palestine.

Using photography, film, and writing, Moyra Davey explores new media interspersed with historical media and autobiographical details.

Helen Frederick’s pulp paintings in Acts of Silence at the Phillips Collection “evoke a concern for environmental degradation.”

—Emily Haight is the digital editorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

She Who Tells a Story: Gohar Dashti

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In Arabic, the word rawiya means “she who tells a story.” Each artist in NMWA’s summer exhibition She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World offers a vision of the world she has witnessed.

Gohar Dashti

(b. 1980, Ahvaz, Iran; lives Tehran)

Gohar Dashti creates photographs that reference history and culture within contemporary society, particularly her homeland, Iran. She says, “Because my work is about social issues in Iran, I have to touch it, I have to feel it, if I want to do artwork.”

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Left to right: MFA Boston curator Kristen Gresh and She Who Tells a Story artist Gohar Dashti during the exhibition’s opening reception; Photo: NMWA

In Her Own Words

“This conflict [the eight-year Iran–Iraq War, 1980–88] has had a strong symbolic influence on the emotional life of my generation. Although we may be safe within the walls of our homes, the war continues to reach us through newspapers, television and the Internet. [Dashti’s series ‘Today’s Life and War’] represents war and its legacy, the ways in which it permeates all aspects of contemporary society. I capture moments that reference the ongoing duality of life and war without precluding hope. In a fictionalized battlefield, I show a couple in a series of everyday activities: eating breakfast, watching television, and celebrating their wedding. Though they do not visibly express emotion, the man and woman embody the power of perseverance, determination, and survival.”—Gohar Dashti, artist statement for “Today’s Life and War”

What’s On View?

Several of Dashti’s photographs from the “Today’s Life and War” series are on view in She Who Tells a Story. The two models in these images proceed through activities of daily life amid signs of war—barbed wire, tanks, and sandbags—in a desert landscape. In some images, such as one that shows them sitting in a burned-out car in wedding finery, they look directly at the camera with neutral or stricken expressions. In others, they look to each other, to their chores, or to TV, newspapers, or computers.

Gohar Dashti, Untitled #5, from the series “Today’s Life and War,” 2008, Chromogenic print, 27 5/8 x 41 3/8 in.; Courtesy of the artist, Azita Bina, and Robert Klein Gallery; © Gohar Dashti

Gohar Dashti, Untitled #5, from the series “Today’s Life and War,” 2008, Chromogenic print, 27 5/8 x 41 3/8 in.; Courtesy of the artist, Azita Bina, and Robert Klein Gallery; © Gohar Dashti

Dashti says that the site for the photographs is a government-owned area used by filmmakers creating movies about war. She was able to secure the location—a huge area—to take pictures, and she selected 10 of her staged photographs for the finished series. Through this series, Dashti hoped to evoke the experience of her generation, who had to proceed with their lives and youths in spite of the war around them.

Visit the museum and explore She Who Tells a Story, on view through July 31, 2016.

—Elizabeth Lynch is the editor at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Art Fix Friday: April 22, 2016

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TIME magazine released their list of the 100 most influential people. Bustle writes, “with 60 men and 40 women, the TIME 100 list is still experiencing a gender gap.” The magazine also highlighted 13 women whose influence exceeds their fame, including Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei and 87-year old Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.

In a TIME interview, rapper Nicki Minaj gives advice to women and says, “Don’t ever be ashamed to ask for the top dollar in your field.” Jennifer Lawrence writes an essay about Adele and calls the British songstress “an international treasure.” Tina Fey writes a feminist ode to UFC fighter Ronda Rousey. The list also includes actresses Melissa McCarthy, Priyanka Chopra, and Gina Rodriguez—among others.

Front-Page Femmes

The Guardian examines how the death of student Sara Ottens profoundly impacted Cuban American performance artist Ana Mendieta.

Ilma Gore faces a potential lawsuit from Donald Trump’s legal team if her painting of a nude Trump sells.

The Guardian discusses how to buy indigenous Australian art—ethically.

Photographer Annie Leibovitz discusses career advice she received from Queen Elizabeth II.

Harriet Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. There are also plans for seven more historic female figures to grace the $5 and $10 bills.

ARTnews discusses how artist Lynn Hershman Leeson published art criticism under the guise of three invented personas.

Everybody Loves Raymond actress Doris Roberts passed away on Sunday at age 90.

“It takes a lot of bravery to be kind,” says Newbery award-winning author Kate DiCamillo.

Slate interviews photographer Amanda Marsalis about Ava DuVernay, gentrification, and directing her first film, Echo.

Barbara Holmes used wood reclaimed from a dump in San Francisco to create a spiraled, site-specific installation.

After tragic news of Prince’s death on Thursday, women artists paid their respects on social media and Slate explored his history of collaboration with women, calling Prince “one of music’s great champions of women.”

Coachella has no female headliners—for the ninth year in a row.

The documentary series, The Ascent of Woman, recognizes feminist trailblazers in an attempt to “retell the story of civilization with women and men side by side for the first time.”

Shows We Want to See

Lee Miller: A Woman’s War at the Imperial War Museums closes this Sunday. The exhibition showcases over 150 images by the war correspondent, alongside Picasso’s portrait of Miller, and her personal correspondence with Condé Nast.

The first major survey of Mona Hatoum’s work in the U.K. is on view at Tate Modern. The Lebanese-born Palestinian artist is best known for adjusting domestic items to “imbue them with a certain lethal horror.”

A new exhibition features Pati Hill’s “delicate, remarkable images, all made on the rather unremarkable IBM Copier II.”

Roz Chast creates a larger-than-life mural in the Museum of the City of New York, for an exhibition of 200 of her drawings titled Cartoon Memoirs.

—Emily Haight is the digital editorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

She Who Tells a Story: Boushra Almutawakel

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In Arabic, the word rawiya means “she who tells a story.” Each artist in in NMWA’s summer exhibition She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World offers a vision of the world she has witnessed.

A NMWA visitor studies Boushra Almutawakel’s Untitled from The Hijab series

A NMWA visitor studies Boushra Almutawakel’s Untitled from “The Hijab” series (2001)

Boushra Almutawakel

(b. 1969, Sana’a, Yemen; lives Sana’a and Paris)

Yemen’s first professional female photographer, Boushra Almutawakel, gained international recognition for using the veil to challenge social trends and explore the complexities of public appearance. Almutawakel says, “I want to be careful not to fuel the stereotypical, widespread negative images most commonly portrayed about the hijab/veil in the Western media.”

In Her Own Words

“I wanted to explore the many faces and facets of the veil based on my own personal experiences and observations: the convenience, freedom, strength, the power, liberation, limitations, danger, humor, irony, the variety, cultural, social, and religious aspects, the beauty, mystery…”—Boushra Almutawakel

“A lot of people think that covered women are oppressed, backwards and uneducated. That is far from the truth. But at the same time I can’t hear very well if I am veiled and I can’t see the lips of women wearing the niqab. The biggest problem I have is with children being covered—there is nothing Islamic about that. I prefer our traditional veils which are colourful and more open.”—Boushra Almutawakel, interview in The Economist

What’s On View?

Ten photographs by Almutawakel are on view in She Who Tells a Story, including nine that comprise her “Mother, Daughter, Doll” series (2010). These staged portraits portray a young girl holding a doll and sitting on her mother’s lap. In each successive photograph, the figures’ smiles fade and their clothing darkens, covering more and more skin. The final photograph shows a black backdrop and an empty pedestal––the mother, daughter, and doll have vanished.

Boushra Almutawakel, “Mother, Daughter, Doll” series, 2010; Pigment prints, nine photographs, each 24 x 16 in.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum purchase with funds donated by Richard and Lucille Spagnuolo, 2013.556–564; Photograph © 2015 MFA Boston

Boushra Almutawakel, “Mother, Daughter, Doll” series, 2010; Pigment prints, nine photographs, each 24 x 16 in.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum purchase with funds donated by Richard and Lucille Spagnuolo, 2013.556–564; Photograph © 2015 MFA Boston

Almutawakel and her eldest daughter posed for the portraits after the Yemeni women who agreed to be photographed realized the work would be exhibited and declined. The artist said, “I thought, you know, if I’m asking them to take a risk and to be photographed, I said why don’t I put myself to the test and put myself in front of the camera.” The outfits in the first three images are clothes worn and owned by the artist herself, while the others belonged to family members and friends.

Almutawakel says, “I’m not against the hijab—I’m not even against the veil—but it has become a bit excessive in the covering.” Rather than denounce the headscarf (hijab), these portraits protest the more extensive, all-black niqab. Almutawakel’s visual commentary challenges the spread in Yemen of religious extremism, which calls for public concealment of women’s and girls’ bodies.

Listen to an audio recording of the artist discussing her work here. Visit the museum and explore She Who Tells a Story, on view through July 31, 2016.

—Emily Haight is the digital editorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.