Visions of Sex Presentation: The Covered Body-Research.

Shirin Neshat - 'Women of Allah'

'feminist criticism of the chador and of what it symbolises- the severe repression of women, must not be seen in the context of Western Orientalism. The image of the veiled Muslim woman has long served as a metaphor for the national body. She is an enigma, whose unveiling symbolically justified the colonialist transgression.' (Shirin Neshat, published by the Serpentine Gallery, 2000)

'Women of Allah' raises the question of whether the chador can be used as a weapon to deflect the colonialist gaze.

'the notion of a radical denial of the gaze and the concomitant strategy of absence is extremely productive'

- use of metaphor and complex layers of meaning within her work is itself to be seen as a veil that falls across the picture.

Perhaps the point is to render visible the existence of a culture without simultaneously subjecting it to the mercy of the all-incorporating western gaze that wants to know everything and understands nothing.

The veil is used as a power to obliterate the gaze (either a gendered or cultural gaze) and as a protecting curtain of the innnate power existing beneath it.