In Islamic art, representations of women and the female figure are controversial. Hend Al Mansour, from Saudi Arabia, currently residing in the United States, examines Islamic social practices. Her multi-media works celebrate and critiques Islamic Arab culture. The artist, through Islamic aesthetic addresses gender equality, sexual independence and role of women. This episode includes a conversation with Hend.
Cover Image: “Facebook 2,” 2013
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Hend Al Mansour website
Artist Statement
A.I.R. Gallery
Script: Hello my art enthusiasts!—today we enter into the beauty of the Islamic aesthetic through the lens of the female experience and perspective of the contemporary artist Hend Al Mansour. Before we dive into Hend’s work, her practice and my pleasure to engage in a conversation with the artist, allow me to offer a bird’s eye overview of Islamic art. Special thanks to The Metropolitan Museum of Art—one resource in my research.
Historically Islamic art, inspired by religion, language and culture, was produced for Muslim religious life. This includes the production of manuscripts, their holy book, the Qur’an. The Qur’an’s folios and manuscripts gave rise to a proliferation of writing or calligraphy and its ornamental possibilities on many other works of art across the Islamic world. Sacred spaces like mosques provide a glimpse into the decorative and functional features of these structures; for example, the mihrab or prayer niche within a mosque. The mihrab positions the faithful towards the point nearest to Mecca, a city in western Saudi Arabia; Mecca is the birthplace of the prophet Mohammad. Another common preference in all of religious art and much of secular art is geometric and vegetal (plantlike) decoration. Nature-based imagery is expressed in a broad range of garden imagery; repeating patterns of flowers and plants, sometimes abstract and sometimes naturalistic—nonfigural ornament presents itself in a vast range of media, ceramics, textiles, rugs, decorative margins of manuscript pages. Some believe the pervasiveness of garden and plant imagery in Islamic art stems from the Qur’an’s description of heaven as a lush garden paradise. Figural representation is not deemed appropriate, especially in a religious context. You will not find the body in the sacred spaces of the mosque or Kaaba. Attitudes toward figural art in the Islamic world varied depending on period and location. There is no prohibition against the depiction of humans or animals mentioned in the Qur’an and use of figural imagery in art depends entirely on function and context. In most Islamic regions throughout history, a common compromise was to use figural imagery in a secular context but not in a religious one, or to use images of people and animals on small-scale works of art intended for private enjoyment.
It is complicated and I by no means am an expert on the expression of figural imagery in Islamic art. Hend can speak to this, her work and practice explores the incorporation, and the attitudes towards figural imagery in Islamic art, with special attention to the female figure. Hend asserts in her artist statement, beautifully expressed in a video, the challenges of gender bias/equality in Islamic art, the embedded “pervasive biased attitudes towards the female figure,” and Hend’s desire to “elevate the woman’s body and erase the shame put upon it.”
What is astonishing in Hend’s work is her ability to draw the viewer into a visual journey into multi-layered worlds of both fantasy and reality. Embedded in her visual imagery, representations of the figure is the beauty and lineage of Islamic ornamentation, Arabic calligraphy, and geometric and vegetal—perfect symmetry of intricate patterns, flowing lines and tendrils inspired by plant and flowers. Her work is truly glorious.
In my conversation with Hend we focus on three works from her practice. Let’s take a moment to review each of the works—an audio journey into Hend’s visual world.
Hend’s works for the show:
- The title of the “Facebook 1,” a 2013 screen print, in on paper work. It is part of a series “Facebook Project” In Facebook 1, we see a woman facing the viewer, her legs are crossed beneath her exposing her bare feet. She is wearing a dark blue Abaya (Arabian cloak) and sitting on a rug woven in the Bedouin style. Within a background of checkered pattern characteristic of Arabian men’s headdress, is an open book, the pages are blank. From a pen in her hand, she begins to write her story as an Arabic poem addressing her people as her audience looks on. Behind the woman and inside the book there is a slumped down figure looking down and “seems like a mirror image of the central figure. “Facebook 2” of this series and companion piece to Facebook 1 is the poem. The poem, the text is part of the storytelling, the narrative and part of the image.
Poem: In part the poem reads:
I am writing my face
Hear me, O home
And hold your judgment until the moment is over
I grow out of you, yours is my direction when I pray
Hear me out until the end of the painting
You are whom I write for
You are whom I paint for
You are the crowd who avoids the asking gaze
Avoids searching for the eye of truth
Listen to me for a moment
=
I came from you, I beg you
Not to bury me alive
And look at me
In the eye, do not despise me
Give me a break and only announce your verdict
After you listen and comprehend
My letters are Hubara’s chicks
Which have hatched – aghast –
Among the teeth of hesitation
My story: my birthplace was a mosque’s chant
Was poetry, was art
Was henna and a kohl styled
Was a Dahna’a desert where
the hot sand raced the north star
My story: I turned into a wall
My brush was immunized against rain
After the time of dreams
She died
Never stormed and raved again
All colors became one
Black and white
The river stopped
And the trembling of poems
Dried out
- “Al Badre” Al-Badre means “full moon” in Arabic. In the 2006 screen printing on canvas image, Arabic calligraphy forms the background design. The words are “Allah” and “Mohammed” repeated and intertwined. The figures represent the seeker, the human or “Mohammed” looking up from earth, and the giver, the divine or “Allah” looking down from the sky. What is compelling is the divine or “Allah” looking down from the sky is a female, nude figure. Her arms outstretched meet with this glorious sensuality, the “human” a male figure looking up from earth.
- The last work before we dive into my conversation with Hend is titled “Scribe.” Painting, printmaking, installation and animation intersect in this work which highlights the role of Mohammed’s wife, Hafsah, in scribing and preserving the Quran. A work in progress, exhibited later in the fall at the Phipps Center for the Arts in Wisconsin, the painting is a close up study of a life size painting of Hafsah (Peace Be Upon Her) showing her writing. The background an Islamic geometric pattern that installed will cover at 15 x 11 foot space. Part of the space will display a short animation film. In Scribe we experience a multiple media and processes, from painting to animation in an installation that beckons us to enter into.
Now that we have some historical perspective of Islamic Art and a visual dive into three of Hend’s works, please join me in a conversation with the artist Hend Al-Mansour.