REVIEWS

A Red Riding Hood And a Veil – Dorit Cohen
NY ARTS


When artist and photographer Shirin Aliabadi lifts the Islamic veil of a contemporary Iranian woman, she exposes a surprise; blond hair, blue, green or gray contact lenses, an occasional facial piercing and, most importantly, surgical nose tape. In the eyes of a contemporary Iranian woman, a nose covered with a surgical tape is beautiful. It doesn’t mean that she is recovering from a plastic surgery. It insinuates that she could afford one. Rather than an indication of self-mutilation, the surgical tape becomes the “in” look and a fashion “must have” because of its association with a desirable lifestyle.

Aliabadi’s compelling portraits are included in “Woman: Self Portrait,” a group exhibition composed of the works of 17 local and international women artists that were on view at Kashya Hildebrand Gallery from June 1st until July 1st 2006. Like the works of other artists who participate in this intriguing exhibition, Alibadi’s Miss Hybrid provides an insight into how women perceive themselves and how those self-perceptions express or clash with their surrounding social and political environments.

In another interesting piece, Perverted Collage, Shirin Aliabadi and Farhad Moshiri composed a collection of 45 magazine covers, each depicting a photograph of a smiling, seductive little girl. In Iran, the portrayal of adult women is censored. Magazine editors use young girls as a loophole of this censorship to sell their magazines, and the general public has no problem with that. For the artists, these seductive portraits of children represent the conflict between religious beliefs and pop culture.
In Memory, a work by a New York-based artist, Leemour Pelli, a female figure is physically marked by an embedded set of eyes. The eyes are enclosed in a narrow strip—like a woman peeking behind an Islamic veil or like a man peeping through a crack in a window. The woman seems to be in pain, screaming. Her red figure is trapped by the harsh outlines of an ideal doll body and she is pinned by a dark, phallic form. Does the striking male gaze imply an unwanted desire? Is it a voyeuristic gaze invading both the woman’s body and her psyche? The artist says that her work captures the experience of a female being looked at in a certain way. Perhaps the figure was “a victim of a certain kind of perception, being seen or looked at in a certain way. It can also be about the agony of being perceived.”

The Israeli artist Dalit Gurevich depicts herself in Little Red Riding Hood. She seems unsteady and uncomfortable inside her fairytale. The red background is threatening to swallow her sad, frightened face and an aggressive yellow object is throwing her out of balance and pushing her out of the painting. The wolf, the scary element in the story, is a real level attached to the canvas, aiming at her vagina. The level, an instrument of measurement, suggests that she might not be up to standard. The artist associates this painting with her feelings towards her body image during her adolescent years.

Most of the works on view in this exhibition deal with issues related to body image, and it’s not surprising. As Skin and Paper by artist and media photographer Patricia Von Ah suggests, women are not comfortable in their own skin since they are constantly comparing themselves to ideal stereotypes presented by the media.
In her video To Date, Sonja Wyss, a Swiss artist who lives and works in Amsterdam, shows a woman getting ready for a date. While the woman is putting on make up and doing her hair over and over again, unhappy with the results, the artist exposes the destructive qualities of the ritual of beautification.

Naomi Harris, a young photographer from Canada, documented the life of elderly women in Miami Beach. She created deeply moving portraits of women sunbathing, getting their hair done and checking out men on the beach.

In Michal Chelbin’s photograph, Janna and Alona, two young girls turn into seductive women right in front of our eyes which are not yet ready for such a drastic change. Images of innocence and experience seem to be fighting for a hold on their young bodies and young minds.

In paintings by Ammanda Seelye-Salzman, the sexual awakening of adolescent girls is set against the nudity of mature women. The older woman seems much more comfortable with her body than the lovely young girl. By painting members of her own family, her aunt and her teenage daughters, the artist examines her own feminine life cycle.

In Face of Beauty by Patricia Von Ah, a young woman’s face is covered with ambiguous marks. Is it a smeared make up? Is she a beaten woman trying to hide her bruises?

Outside the gallery near the entrance, a yellow ribbon marks a murder scene. The white outlines of a missing body are covered with phrases such as “It’s your fault.” Walk Unafraid is a site-specific installation created by artist-activist and Red Collaborative Founder, Gabrielle Senza. It speaks of the shame and secrecy of the physically, sexually and emotionally abused.
“Woman: Self Portrait” is a part of “Until The Violence Stops: NYC,” a festival of theater, spoken word, performance and community events created to bring the issue of violence against women and girls front and center within culture and community.

“I wanted to do something for V Day,” Dalit Anolik, the curator of “Woman: Self Portraits” told me. V Day (The “V” stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina) founded by playwright Eva Ensler (The Vagina Monologues), is a non-profit organization that distributes funds to grassroots, national and international organizations and programs that work to stop violence against women and girls. “Woman: Self Portrait” is a benefit exhibition to raise awareness and funds for V Day. Ten percent of all sales will be donated to V Day.

In collaboration with V Day’s campaign, Anolik organized a special event on June 15, 2006—artist talk by Erika Harrsch followed by a lecture. Dr. Danielle Knafo, a psychoanalyst, spoke on “Revelations and Rage—Violence Against Women in the Work of Female Artists.”

Anolik created this exhibition for the festival, but she did not limit the art to works dealing with issues of abuse. “I wanted to offer a multi-cultural view of the contemporary female experience. Violence against women is one aspect of it,” she explained. While discussing the works she chose to exhibit, she focused on women’s strength, healing and hope.

Referring to Lynne Marie’s quilts, Anolik suggested that “the metaphor of the quilt speaks as covering and shelter for the individual soul made from salvaged fragments of one’s life. Through her tools—needle and thread, the artist mended herself and used her art as a personal way of recovery.”

On the wall, next to Lynne Marie’s quilt, she put its creator’s quote: “I pay homage to all the women who quilted anonymously long before our voices were recognized as valid and while this medium served as documentation of Herstory.”

In a photographic series titled “Verygoodreason,” Julieta Schildknecht, a Brazilian artist who lives and works in Switzerland, explores a painful childhood. Her images of naked dolls talk of the unspeakable. The artist hopes that, by exposing her films to light, she sheds light on a painful reality and facilitates a change. Her images are supported by a poem: “Awareness begins at the source and how we feel about something that happens daily and repeats pathologically, something incredibly subtle, masked, forgiven…and forbidden. Roles are switched, disfigured, anchored. Crimes are institutionalized.”
Erika Harrsch, a Mexican artist, constructs mysterious butterflies. At first sight “Imagos” seems like a series of enlarged photographs of real butterflies. A closer look reveals that these are imaginary hybrids in whose abdomens the artist placed images of female genitals. She chose each woman with the same geographic origin as the represented butterfly. The result is somewhat magical. The artist juxtaposes women and butterflies as objects of desire and creates a new identity.

During her talk on June 15th at the special event in collaboration with the V-Day campaign, the artist spoke about the process of creating those butterflies. She photographed vaginas of over forty women who felt quite comfortable with that. While the process was meant to help the artist deal with her own sexuality, it was a healing experience for her models as well. When a woman who went through the agony of female circumcision as a child saw her vagina portrait, she said that she couldn’t believe that it could ever look so beautiful.

For Dalit Anolik, the artist who most clearly illustrates contemporary female experience is Astari Rasjid, an Indonesian artist whose work Anolik discovered in Paris. Though Ms. Rasjid’s art is rooted in Indonesia’s traditional society and its social code, many of the issues she deals with are quite universal. Rasjid knows that women’s issues can’t be separated from men’s issues because “in the end they are human issues.” Yet she never fails to see the humor behind serious issues because “it’s too easy to fall into the trap of righteousness.”

Using her own face as a model, the artist illustrates the different roles Indonesian women are expected to play. In AK 47 and Kelly Bag “the artist portrays herself as a nude Venus armed with a gun in one arm and a fashionable purse in the other. She is supposed to look good at any moment, to be strong and independent and to find a proper balance between fashion and tradition. In Evereadybabe—Self Portrait, Astri Rasjid depicts herself holding too many tools, ready to fit into any of her roles at any time. She looks confident and strong. She can do it