A veil is a veil
A Veil is a Veil investigates the representation of the veil across distinct visual traditions, foregrounding archival Orientalist photography alongside Western religious and Renaissance imagery. This project assembles and recontextualizes these images to explore the ways veiled women—particularly Muslim women—have been constructed through competing cultural and ideological frameworks.
Within Orientalist visual discourse, the veil frequently functions as a signifier of enigma, eroticism, or subjugation, perpetuating tropes that cast Muslim women as obscured subjects to be unveiled or rescued. Conversely, in Renaissance and religious art, veiling operates as an iconographic device denoting sanctity, purity, and elevated social status.
By juxtaposing and layering these divergent visual vocabularies through collage, A Veil is a Veil opens a dialogue around the ambivalence and multiplicity embedded in veiling practices and their representations. The work destabilizes singular readings, emphasizing the veil as a mutable signifier, capable of protecting, concealing, venerating, or resisting depending on its historical and cultural context. Through these layered assemblages, the project invites a reconsideration of how visual semiotics and cultural narratives shape perception.
