Awrah عورة - Ways of seeing by John Berger, 2017 (in progress)

“Awrah عورة” is a project that takes the book “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger as a starting ground, where the author studies the representation of nude female bodies in oil paintings (ex: Botticelli, Manet, etc.) as well as in advertising images. I stumbled upon the book in a private library and discovered that all nude paintings, drawings and photographs were censored, and the sensitive body parts were hidden by white stickers when the book was checked by Qatari customs. This discovery brought up several questions related to the way the female body is treated in art history, and how the act of censorship directed towards a taboo (nudity) triggers more curiosity to unravel what is hidden.

Throughout my research I came to the realization that the book consists of seven numbered essays; four using words and images and three using images only. This finding made it apparent that covering the images somehow distorted the essence and structure of the book itself.

The contemporary Arab society still holds a negative perception of the body even though the study of the human body for scientific research has been completely acceptable for centuries (ex: Avicenna, Arrazi). In fact, how Islam looks at sex and the body is worth mentioning, as according to the exegesis of the VII century Al-Qotbî: "what God created first in man is his sex" which means that it is the beginning of creation. Sex is a body organ in Arabic, a hole (farj) which translates to an “incision”. Despite all mentioned above there is still a direct connotation between the female body and taboo in the Arab world as it is still thought of as Awrah (nakedness).

This project is an attempt to address the representation of the nude female body in contemporary Arab societies. I’m trying to question how nudity is perceived and whether the creation of a universal and personal image of the body is possible.