Gulf Photo Plus exhibition delves into the subject of body politics
Flying high at Gulf Photo Plus exhibition. Kamal Kassim/Gulf Today
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
Gulf Photo Plus (GPP) is presenting its first major photo exhibition dedicated to feminism and body politics in the Arab World (Mar. 8 – Apr. 15). Titled Swallow This! Arab Women and Body Politics, it features the work of photographers Lara Chahine and Reem Falaknaz. The opening coincided with International Women’s Day, which also took place on March 8. The exhibition features over 40 works, including photography, digital media and video installation.
Chahine and Falaknaz are alumnae of the Arab Documentary Photography Program, which is supported by AFAC (Arab Fund for Arts and Culture), Prince Claus Fund and Magnum Foundation. The works on view explore the pathologisation of women’s bodies, where the politically absurd, visually surreal and the humorous, converge.
Drawing on the collective experience of womanhood, Chahine and Falaknaz embrace performance art, becoming the subjects of their own work, at times. In Bless Your Beauty, photographer Chahine, who is based in Lebanon explores the pressure to attain ‘sacred’ beauty ideals at any cost — physical, emotional, and financial.
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As part of her first major photo series, her work covers personal stories of women in Lebanon told during and after the October Revolution, the pandemic and the Beirut blast. The photographer documents and presents the fraught urban landscape that produces these stories. (The 17 October Protests is a series of civil protests taking place in Lebanon).
In Falaknaz’s If a hymen breaks and no one hears it, the UAE/Oman-based photographer presents research into hymen repair remedies, documenting conversations with muftis, herbalists, sheikhs, doctors, and sorcerers. Falaknaz’s final product is a digital media project that appropriates internet culture, print media, literature and oral history, to shed light on the covert ways that women must navigate socio-religious practices, herbalism, sorcery, and medical malpractice.
Swallow This! weaves narratives where the clinical or scientific, the grotesque or bodily, the divine or occult, coexist as contemporary reflections on a post-internet, Arab feminism.
Both photographers seek to unpack “erotic capital”, where the strange is made familiar, and the familiar, strange.
Rama Ghanem, curator at Gulf Photo Plus, says: “In recent years, there’s been more sophisticated work from young Arab women photographers in the region; it’s about time that we dedicated space for them, and for the important conversations that emerge, once we talk about women’s lived experiences.
“Because Arab womanhood doesn’t exist in a vacuum, inevitably we also begin to talk about political decay, and about social economic and environmental justice, refugeehood and migration, religious freedom and other issues, when we address women’s issues.” She adds: “I also felt that there needs to be a different approach to feminist work that is distributed and exhibited in the region. Work can be serious in its influence, and still be delivered in an accessible, funny, light way.
“I’d like to challenge audiences with work that is both humorous and critical, ultimately put on an entertaining, biting show that is witty, charged, emotional, and intelligent.” The phrase “body politics” was first used in the 1970s, during the feminist movement in the USA. It arose out of feminist politics and abortion debates.
“The personal is the political” became a slogan that captured domestic contests for equal rights at home and in inter-gender relationships. It emphasised a woman’s power and authority over her own body.
Body politics involves the fight against objectification of the female body and violence against women and girls, and the campaign for reproductive rights for women.
Mohamed Somji, GPP Founder said that “it is important for GPP to offer a space for artists to present works that speaks to social issues faced by people that live in the region and in this case, women who are pressured to look a certain way to conform to capitalist narratives and patriarchal societies. We hope that we can contribute to a discourse and healthy debate around these issues.”
Chahine (b.1998) is a self-taught photographer from North Lebanon and is currently based between Beirut and New York. Focusing first on academia and earning a degree in political science, it was not until much later that she considered photography in parallel to politics. She learned how to click a shutter and how to visually convey her surroundings during Lebanon’s October Revolution. Her project completed during the Arab Documentary Photography Program, Bless Your Beauty, is her first long-term documentary project and the starting point for her career as an image maker.
Falaknaz’s work documents the social and physical landscape of the UAE and its residents. In 2014, she took part in the Arab Documentary Photography Program. Her commissions include UAE’s National Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale and 2020 Lahore Biennale. Ghanem (b. 1998) is an artist and curator, based in Dubai. Her practice spans research-driven performance and digital media. She holds a BFA (hons) from Goldsmiths, University of London. She is a fellow with the ninth cohort of the Salama Bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship. She currently manages exhibitions at GPP.
GPP is one of Dubai’s major centres for photography. Based in Alserkal Avenue, it is a community organisation cultivating visual practices locally and internationally, with educational photography workshops, exhibitions, art programmes, events, state-of-the-art printing services, besides other specialised resources. It’s curated editions collections support the work of MENASA photographers, and editions from the current exhibition are also available. Viewers can inquire about purchases at GPP, or visit GPP website.
