يـ/جسد/ون  Em/body/ies, 2021

Oil and Acrylic on paper

24 cm x 32 cm /each

“Em/body/ies” is a continuous development of the previous projects “Awrah” and the “Adam and Eve” miniatures.

The project is about the perception of the female body over time, across cultures and throughout art history. Appropriated from Greek sculpture, to Renaissance drawing and painting, to the Persian, Indian and Islamic illuminated manuscripts. In most Arab societies, the visual representation of living beings is forbidden, and thus the bodies of holy figures are often visible, but their faces are covered with a veil, out of reverence and respect.

Here in these miniatures, I try to create a subject matter using nudes from the classical Renaissance paintings & photos of human anatomy. The miniatures depict multiple superimposed nude female bodies in various positions —standing, laying, crouching, sitting— in an amorphous yet contained space, so they might seem to be in motion. The womens’ bodies are portrayed in a state of nudity, whether in groups or in pairs where they appear stripped and exposed, huddled in a surface of a fleshy color that turns into an open space, in a moment of intimacy. The naked bodies move in and out of focus, and blend in a way until they almost become one flesh. 

The overlaid bodies are not vertistic, intentionally. I use it as a means to abstract the usual depiction of female bodies. I try to manipulate the forms of figurative representations to present new ways of looking at nudity, or other expressions of embodiment.