Exhibition Themes

In Muslim cultures, the notion of a region or a nation being represented by its people, as opposed to its ruling elite, began to emerge in the 17th century. The origins of this idea can be found in paintings made for Europeans arriving in large numbers in the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal realms, which stretched from Turkey to Iran and India. These depicted different types of people and included captions identifying the figures by ethnicity, occupation, or religion, succinctly summarizing the complex demographic landscape of these empires. The concept of giving human form to a national character surfaced again between the 1920s and 1960s, a period of political upheaval following the gradual dismantling of European colonialism and the breakup of the vast Ottoman empire. As new states emerged across the Middle East, artists attempted to define each nation’s character by turning to images of their fellow citizens.

This sculpture captures a slice of daily life along the Nile. When it was made, local parliamentary rule had recently been established in Egypt after a period of British control. It presents a woman of the peasant class (fellaha) in a regal manner, celebrating the role of the Egyptian people, and particularly women, in the formation of the modern Egyptian state. In this period of great political change, the artist Mahmoud Mukhtar returned to the monumental sculptural forms of ancient Egypt to aggrandize the country’s everyday people.

The invention of photography in the mid-19th century introduced the opportunity for self-representation to a much wider range of the public than before; with the establishment of studios in cities across Asia and Africa, many could go to the nearest studio to have a portrait taken for a relatively affordable price. In this photograph, two women and a young boy pose against a painted studio backdrop. The women are seated and formally arranged in the manner typical of portraits from Senegal in the early 20th century, with their hands positioned on their knees and feet turned outward. The boy stands solemnly between them. In intricately dyed indigo garments, the women are dressed in a style that indicates their status as upper-class inhabitants of Saint-Louis, then-capital of Senegal.

From the vast body of material that artists are creating today, a particularly powerful set focuses on issues of representation and identity. The artists in this section grapple with the issue of Muslim identity in their practice through the human form, and question the use of ethnic and religious labels as their work circulates in art markets or is displayed in museums of “Islamic art.”

This photograph is part of a series by Moroccan artist Lalla Essaydi. It responds to Orientalist paintings made in Europe between the 18th and early 20th centuries, which in representing Arab and Asian cultures often resorted to distortions and negative stereotypes. The series is named after a painting by French artist Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) that purported to show the women’s quarters of an Arab Muslim home. Essaydi’s photographs contrast the fantazising myths of Orientalism with her lived experience, emphasizing female relationships and intelligence over the shallow sexuality of Orientalist paintings. In her works, the women’s bodies and clothing are covered in writing, symbolizing a rich, overflowing world of ideas and knowledge.