A dozen female Iranian and Arabic photographers showcased their work at the Ackland Art Museum as part of the She Who Tells a Story exhibition, which the museum hosted between September and December of last year.
Historically, women in Middle Eastern cultures have rarely been empowered, and the exhibit responds to women’s exclusion in politics and arts, ensuring an audience for the artists’ work.
Each artist’s piece was classified into one of three sections—“New Documentary,” ”Constructing Identities,” and “Deconstructing Orientalism”—giving the exhibit a structure and flow that was easy to follow.
The “New Documentary” portion of the exhibition focused on the contemporary experience of Arabic people. Most of the works deal with themes of war and revolt.
The series Negative Incursions, by Palestinian Rula Halawani, showed the brutal repurcutions of an Israeli invasion on Palestine. With the subtle touch of a negative filter, the former photojournalist transforms the pictures into a molten rubble of extreme blacks and whites.
The three-panel portrait Bullets Revisited #3 is a dazzling display imbued with symbolism. A woman lies chained on a bed, covered in golden bullet shells, her arms layered with calligraphy that photographer Lalla Essaydi, a Moroccan-born woman, personally inscribed. Historically, calligraphy is mostly written by men, and, although the letters on the woman’s body are gibberish, they convey Essaydi’s message seamlessly: a defiant rejection of the misogyny and injustice in Middle Eastern cultures.
Photographer Rania Matar shows the connection of Middle Eastern female teenagers—all from different backgrounds—by picturing them in their most personal of spaces: their bedrooms. Matar was able to capture the essence of adolescence by becoming part of the teenager’s environment.
“I always spent time with each girl, so she was comfortable with me and eventually the photography session became a beautiful and intimate collaboration,” Matar said in her project statement for the Girl and Her Room portfolio.
Chapel Hill teacher Kristen Morgan has begun a collaboration between her ceramics class and Garrison Reid’s animation class. Reid’s students will be using Mudbox Character Modeling and Adobe programs to create humanoid figures. Morgan’s class will then receive these models and transform them into clay sculptures with written narratives. The teachers’ project was inspired by She Who Tells a Story.
“The students are planning a school-based art show to showcase these pieces,” Morgan said. The project, which students began this week, will help students express their abilities in ceramics and artistic visions through a cumulative exhibit.
She Who Tells a Story, which started in 2003, has ventured across the country, stopping at museums such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. She Who Tells a Story will be followed by an exhibit featuring the sculptures of Rhonda Morgan Wilkerson, which starts on July 5.
