‘Unveiled’ Exhibit: Illuminating Inequality and Violence in the Middle East

Kader Attia's installation ‘Ghosts' has dominated the media's coverage of the Saatchi Gallery's latest exhibit Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East. It is indeed a striking piece, showing 224 Muslim women crafted entirely from tinfoil crouching in prayer. The figures are hollow and vulnerable, yet their metallic shimmer lights up the room. The haunting quality of ‘Ghosts' permeates the rest of the exhibit, whose artists have used their work to express the trauma of war and the indignity of discrimination.

The theme of gender inequality pre-dominated the work of male and female artists alike. For instance, Ahmad Morshedloo's depiction of a woman at rest is an almost voyeuristic study of a moment of intimacy and solitude.  At first glance, the piece is cold, rigid, and almost morgue like; yet the subject's stiffly rendered figure contrasts with the movement in her mass of hair that dominates the canvas. The painting subtly illustrates the long-standing constraints on Middle Eastern women in the private sphere, but also comments on the way in which tradition and custom bequeath power to women. Hair, for example, has historically in the Middle East been considered a potent source of female sexuality and sway over men.

A similar ambiguity is evident in Shadi Ghadirian's compelling photographs of fully concealed women in the traditional Iranian chador, whose faces have been replaced by generic kitchen utensils. The 183 x 183 prints engulf the room with the anonymity of the shrouded, faceless figures. A current of violence and resentment underwrites some of the photographs, as steely cleavers, irons and cheese graters glint ominously in front of the muted, flowery chadors. Yet there is also a comedic and tender element to the pieces; Ghadirian manages to instill a sense of individuality into each of her anonymous subjects, with each utensil portrays a different facet of womanhood in all its complexity.

Equally powerful were the works Iraqi artist Halim al-Karim. Al-Karim's photography is informed by his personal experience with war; he evaded compulsory military service under Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War by hiding for three years in a hole covered by rocks. His distorted, monochromatic print entitled ‘Hidden Prisoner' depicts harrowed, grotesque faces and evinces the monstrous nature of authoritarianism. The subjects' almost indistinguishable mouths contrast starkly with their eyes -  wide with terror - forcefully conveying the political oppression of Saddam's regime.  

In a recent review, the Financial Times panned the ‘Unveiled' exhibit as providing young artists who "have barely progressed beyond sixth-form competence" with  "too much exposure, too soon". On top of their youth, their artists are accused of portraying their cultural identity in a "transposed and diluted" fashion and of re-ifying the West's misguided perceptions of ‘the other'.

But the selection of young artists based both in the Middle East and abroad is an opportunity to highlight the way that a new generation is experiencing and interpreting national identity, exile, and immigration in a transnational era. It is also a valuable expose of the creativity and imagination produced under, and by, the conditions of censorship in many Middle Eastern countries.

‘Unveiled' is a sincere, critical, and unpretentious examination of the political, social, and cultural struggles that are unfolding in the region. It is also refreshing in the nuance and complexity that it brings to issues like gender inequality, the subject of much clumsy stereotyping in the West. The women depicted by Morshedloo and Ghadirian are not merely victims of their environment. They are active re-arrangers of their culture, defying clichés and demanding attention. Like Kader Attia's ‘Ghosts' these pieces portray an honest vulnerability; but it is outshined by a sense of strength and resolve.