What will befall her? 2006

Artist's Statement

At birth, if not before, a female is categorized by her gender and bound by a vast number of biases, "mores," and cultural restrictions. Throughout her life various limitations will be forced upon her, none of them just or morally defensible. The widespread nature of gender discrimination, affecting approximately half of the world's population, makes it extremely difficult to eradicate. The general sort of gender discrimination, limitations on opportunities, unequal attention in education, wage discrimination, etc. is a longstanding norm. Extreme examples of gender oppression, bride burning, "honor killing', the killing of female babies, rape camps, sexual trafficking in women and children, incest, are so horrific as to make them difficult to comprehend for those who have not directly experienced the crimes. The world looks the other way as millions on millions of women suffer or die.

What Will Befall Them?" is my current effort to simultaneously speak about the dignity of women and of these ongoing injustices. The images included in this application contain representations of six large-scale drawings from this series. Each image depicts a woman against a backdrop of imagery and text. The women are nude, as the intent is to show them without the "veils" of restrictions, assumptions, and cultural roles. Although prior work has emphasized strong, evocative color, I restricted myself from using color, at once symbolizing the oppression, and stripping the work to essential imagery. The nobility of women stands out in the plain, bold and simple statement of line drawing on paper.

The texts used in these images are poems about women rendered in Persian calligraphy.
Additional figures pattern the backgrounds including burka shrouded figures, soldiers, female babies, books forbidden to women, and fences. Space employed is flat, again a stark quality is sought, and the format of figure on lines of pattern and text is associated with books and illuminated manuscripts.

The archetypal women in "What Will Befall Them," are our mothers, our sisters, and our daughters. They are ourselves. The unarguable fact is that until women and men are understood to be completely equal in rights, in worthiness, in effective powers, until these rights are guaranteed in law and upheld in practice, until women are given the same respect all human beings should be given, the injustices will continue to be perpetrated on all levels. Beneath the packaging assigned by the authorities or powers to which they are subjected, behind the roles assigned by their cultures and in the face of ongoing inequity, a human being exists, equal to yourself, sharing the gift of life, dreaming her dreams, hoping, even against hope, to fulfill her potential.

Toward that potential…..
Fahimeh Vahdat