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| "Fleshy Weapons," 1997. Acrylic, dry pigment watercolor, tea wash on linen; 96 x 70 inches. Collection of the artist. |
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“Fleshy Weapons”
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| "Fleshy Weapons" depicts
a red, floating female form whose feet are replaced with gestural
loops that connect her legs, replacing the traditional weight of
the human figure with a buoyant feeling of self-containment. Multi-armed
and veiled, the provocative figure references both the Hindu multi-armed
goddess and the veiled Muslim woman, mixing traditional iconography
from India and Pakistan. The multiple arms grasp exquisitely painted
weapons, some raised as if to strike, others pointing to the
ground, creating a circle of weaponry that is neither strictly an
offense nor a defense. Though the white veil covers the arms to
their wrists, it is raised over the chest showing a vaguely abstract
female form in purples and yellows and reds. One reaching arm
does not hold a weapon, instead it grasps a white circle within
which is a girl, more finely made than the goddess, her pointed
feet connected by a spare line that loops around the hoop that encircles
her. Unlike the speckled goddess, the
girl is not veiled, instead a pink band in her hair holds white
and purple ribbons that splash down over her shoulders to her waist,
her featureless face clearly visible behind them. Traditionally,
the veil is used to cover and desexualize women, protecting Islamic
men from the seductiveness of the female form. The veil becomes
eroticized by the hinting at what it covers and by the little it
reveals. Here the veil covers only the arms, which nonetheless are
well-equipped for battle, and where the eyes should appear there
are only flat, colored dots. What we as the viewer expect from the
image of a veiled woman - something negative, hinting at oppression
and faintly exotic - is denied us, literally disarming our preconceptions.
"Fleshy Weapons" depicts the female form both historically - the
traditional Islamic woman, the Hindu goddess - and ahistorically,
in the combination of meshed cultural imagery and in its abstract,
transfigured, and highly personal rendering. |
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