Breath against the Gaze

Breath Against the Gaze reimagines Orientalist photographs that stages scenes of intimate leisure, materially confronting a colonial fiction. Contrary to the exotic fantasy of the Western gaze, the women’s quarters (harem/haremlik) were historically places of female sovereignty, where alliance, ritual and counsel shaped daily life and women governed their own social order. Installed in the vitrine, the work becomes a provocation; the mashrabiya – an Islamic architectural lattice window that allows one to see without being seen – transforms the act of looking into an act of intrusion or spectorship. Inside, ceramic tiles bearing photographic transfers materially resist the illusion of flatness. This tactile disruption shifts focus from the passivity of the depicted bodies to the shared ritual of smoking, where scent and gesture intertwine. The exchange of breath through the pipe emerges as the photograph's most tangible remnant, a trace of the harem’s sororal trust. The installation re-materializes this invisible truth of female kinship in defiance of the Western gaze.

Photo documentation by Toni Hafkenscheid and Leila Fatemi.

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This project was made possible with the support of the Gardiner Museum and the Art Gallery of Burlington.