talking of images and their effect on transforming culture, here is an exhibit by christopher slack. in view of the statements he is trying to make about war and violence, what do u think?
i like the idea of the tension between opposites – whether it be between the veil and nudity, kali the goddess/heroine and the monstrosity of violence, the sacred (religion) and profane (sexuality), and of course “us” vs “them”. the pictures are v clean cut, very produced, like an advertisement – is our own self image as a society carefully crafted in a studio? is the same true for “other” cultures?
while editing my film i needed images of women in burqas, so i googled “burqa”, “hijab”, “chador” etc. interestingly enough, along with some images of muslim women wearing the hijab, i happened upon an even larger pool of images of western women in various degrees of undress (some pictures were borderline pornographic) sporting a hijab so dire that their heads were completely blacked out. it was ironic – the liberated western woman juxtaposed against the repressed muslim woman. too funny. these paintings remind me of that contradiction.
for me, the pictures are reminiscent of raquel welch in “one million years bc” or jane fonda in “barbarella” with the addition of contemporary symbols such as the hijab, the kalashnikov, terrorism. the paintings are unsettling. they’re provocative. but they are also quite stereotypical: the objectification of women, the use of sex to titillate and sell (including one’s artwork), and orientalism (eastern women shown exclusively in the context of a harem or as dancing girls complete with diaphanous clothing and veil). so although i am not sure about how profound the images are, they do provoke some discussion.