The article “From Invisible to Actualized: Imagery and Identity in Photos of Women in the Gulf,” by Marjorie Kelly and Sara Al-Ajmi, begins with a summary of the history of photography of women in the Middle East, noting that a very small number of photos exist of women from the Gulf until recent times. In a related vein, her article addresses rapid demographic and infrastructural change, particularly as it has affected artists’ abilities to have a studio, produce work, and exhibit it, but also the ways that these shifts drive the concepts behind the work of many UAE-based artists. By exploring how and where women artists could receive an arts education, and in which language, Derderian also charts changing centers of knowledge production for the Emirati community. The work of these six artists offers a productive lens through which to examine questions of national representation and national pride, and the roles that women play in producing the nation as civilized and cultured, especially women who reside in the country but are not citizens. In her article, Derderian explores the political, economic, and cultural changes leading to the rise of arts in the UAE and the gendered shift from largely male to largely female cultural producers that occurred in the mid-2000s. ![]() ![]() This generation included very few women artists however, in subsequent years, the gendered trend amongst artists in the UAE reversed, and now female artists dominate the scene in the UAE. A pioneering generation of artists began making art in the 1980s in the UAE, which was then a newly formed nation. His article demonstrates how the producers of an episode of SAC, through semiotic cues, attempt to reflect and shape Emirati sociocultural values on pious gendered clothing and perceptions of modernity.Įlizabeth Derderian, in her contribution, “Engendering Change: Charting a History of the Emirates through Women Artists,” explores the intersection of gender, identity, and art in the UAE by charting the work of six female artists based in the UAE between 19. Of particular interest for the topic of this special issue, AlMaazmi’s analysis specifically contributes to discussions of politics of piety and gendered conflict talk by analyzing the strategic illustration of UAE’s female fashion sense and use of the linguistic features that move verbal dueling to verbal attack. One of the significant recurrent themes in the show are fashion and gendered conflict talk. Depending on the episode, it subtly challenges, reproduces, or selectively furthers and complicates social personas in Emirati society. Through his analysis of this show, AlMaazmi suggests that the comic representation of day-to-day topics is used here as part of the process of reproducing Emirati group recognizability, thus consolidating their social citizenship. Emirati popular culture – as mediated in animated sitcoms – is an integral part of the public discourse and imagination of gendered pious fashion and conflict talk, and SAC is one of the earliest and most successful Emirati animated sitcoms in its portrayal of the tapestry of the United Arab Emirates’ ( UAE) ethnic, racial, and linguistic diversity. In “The Apocalyptic Hijab: Emirati Mediations of Pious Fashion and Conflict Talk,” Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi examines an Emirati animated sitcom, Shaabiat Al-Cartoon ( SAC), in order to understand the idiosyncratic concerns of what represents the quintessential characteristics of Emiratis in relation to clothing and language. It is therefore essential that debates around gender and identity in the Gulf are framed within discussions that give voice to both masculine and feminine cultural constructions and representations. The discussion of both masculine and feminine constructions and representations is important as it recognizes that these categories are not necessarily discrete but are interconnected and interrelated. The editors and authors are particularly interested in exploring how both masculinity and femininity are constructed and represented in the Gulf region. ![]() ![]() In addition, the issue explores how gender and identity intersect within the Gulf to produce distinct modes of cultural representation, both tangible and intangible. The authors of each essay seek to unpack the social, political, and economic structures and discourses that underpin gender identity construction in the Gulf, thus providing a framework from which to recognize the structures of power and the dominant ideologies that operate locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally. The essays in this special issue address a gap within the literature by analyzing and interrogating the sociocultural production of gender and identity. The ways in which gender and identity are both constructed and represented in the Gulf is an important and underrepresented area of academic inquiry.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |