THE VEIL

Visible and Invisible Spaces at the Von Schlippe
Mystic River Press
1/22/09

By Elizabeth Yerkes
Press Writer

Please roll over the images for image details.

GROTON – Abaya, hijab, chador, burkha, or veil; whatever name you give it, it’s telling that the Alexey von Schlippe gallery lifted the curtain on this exhibit during the coldest winter months when the gallery is usually closed.

Gallery director Julia Pavone said she “just couldn’t say ‘ No’” to this exhibit partly because if it hadn’t come to this January-February slot, “The Veil” would have had to wait until 2012 to be shown at the von Schlippe. The timing of this show heightens its relevance beyond exposing images of veiling as a religious and cultural practice. With the newly installed president, whose international her­itage and color keeps the discussion about Islam and race open, and the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the exhibit might provoke some and educate others.

The five-year touring show, “The Veil, Visible and Invisible Spaces” will stay in the Branford House on Avery Point’s campus until Feb. 23 but its impact may last longer.

“The Veil” is examined and interpreted via videos, sculptures, installations, photographs, paintings and films. Veiling of Eastern and Western women is displayed, but perhaps because this area is so white and so Western, it was jarring to see and hear why Western women took the veil.

Lead artist Christine Breslin interviewed young Muslim women from where she lives in the Hartford area. She asked them to speak on camera about why they wear the veil in an effort to allay her own fears and misunderstand­ings about Islam that had erupted after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Several of the videoed women reiter­ated that Islam is a peace­ful religion, that they have chosen to wear the veil for modesty and respect to their religion, or because it’s what their families expect of them. Presented this way, it’s hard to get worked up about a head­covering.

But contrast that with “Witness,” the large-for­mat, black and white digi­tal print by Sama Alshaibi of a black-veiled woman holding her very pregnant belly. Alshaibi is an Iraqi­Palestinian teaching at University of Arizona. She stated that her female pro­tagonist represents Palestinians who have been displaced and occu­pied by Israelis. She said she followed the visual iconography of the post­exodus Palestinian culture in which women are “signi­fiers of a people’s tenacity.” “In ‘ Witness,’ the moth­er’s face and humanity are erased behind the symbolic veil, yet she stands in defi­ance,” displaying the Palestinian people’s suffer­ing, said Alshaibi. Even without knowing how deeply Alshaibi identifies with her country’s violent and traumatic national evolution, it’s easy to be rattled by this image.

In “One of These Things is Not Like the Other: Elizabeth Smart,” a musical device that sings the Sesame Street tune calls attention to a quartet of prints of masked and veiled faces. One of these is of Elizabeth Smart, who at 14 years old was abduct­ed from her Salt Lake City home at gunpoint in 2001 while her parents and five siblings slept. She was taken out of state several times during her nine­month kidnapping, but spent much of the time about 18 miles from her family’s home in the hands of her abductors, Brian David Mitchell, 49, a drifter and self-described prophet who called himself “Emmanuel,” and Wanda Ileen Barzee, 56. (Utah courts ruled both of them unfit to stand trial for aggravated kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault and aggravated burglary. In Oct. 2008, the court ruled that Mitchell did not meet the criteria for forced medication to make him competent to stand trial.) To move about in public, both abductors accompa­nied Smart who wore a veil or mask, wig and sunglass­es. Elizabeth’s veiling was likely not her choice, but cooperating might have preserved her life. Are other women in analogous situations in other coun­tries, or in their domestic lives in this country? The artist, Brenda Oelbaum said that the piece was “very strongly influenced by fear.” And that fear comes through loud and clear.

The video documentary shown in the library depicts how Hollywood movies used and misused veiling to portray Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures. The footage from some blockbuster 1920s films and beyond is great and the narration is pretty informative, especially for those who never took a Women’s Studies course.

The exhibition is divided into three categories, The Sacred Veil, The Sensuous Veil, and The Sociopolitical Veil. “Visible and Invisible Spaces is not a documen­tary exhibition, although it features some artful photo­journalism as interludes,” wrote Pavone in the exhib­it notes. The show accom­panies Jennifer Heath’s edited volume, “The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics” which will soon be pub­lished by University of California Press. Christine Breslin and a few other artists will attend the opening reception, Jan. 30 from 6 to 8 p.m.

For more information, call (860) 405-9052 or visit www.averypointarts.uconn.edu