[Reader-list] Princess Hijab

Mon Nov 15 11:37:44 IST 2010

A documentary on Princess Hijab:

*http://www.babelgum.com/5004778/princess-hijab.html*

On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 10:38 PM, Inder Salim <indersalim at gmail.com> wrote:

> well dear Britta,
> the pics are open in the net and dont belong to me, so i believe one
> can do anything one wants, i recommend even to do anything with my own
> pics if you want,
> that is what interests me too
>
> about the performance of Princess Hijab, i am actually keen to hear
> some discussiion on the action itself.
> it is very intense work, a socio-political but it speaks about the
> body in a very intriguing style. half hidden and half naked....what
> actually is the woman's body made up of?  even a man disappears in the
> form, how ?
>
> love
> inder
>
> On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 8:30 PM, Britta Ohm <ohm at zedat.fu-berlin.de>
> wrote:
> > Thanks Inder, for the Magritte links, really interesting; hope you don't
> > mind I forwarded one of the pics (the second) onto my facebook-site,
> where
> > the Princess-article has been circulating as well.
> > Best -- Britta
> >
> > Am 13.11.2010 um 10:40 schrieb Inder Salim:
> >
> >> http://media.photobucket.com/image/magritee/girto/magritte-rape.jpg
> >>
> >>
> >>
> http://www.artnet.com/Galleries/Artwork_Detail.asp?G=&gid=1161&which=&ViewArtistBy=&aid=661456&wid=77723&source=artist&rta=http://www.artnet.com
> >>
> >> above two interesting paintings by Magritte
> >>
> >> thanks Dear for posting the detailed report about
> >> this artist Princess Hijab's action , a  very profound,
> >> and it not certainly tilted towards the Burka Pasand ideology, there
> >> the women are supposed not to expose even little hair on the forehead,
> >> no naked feet, let alone the hair upon legs and thighs,
> >>
> >> it is a very serious work and critics the  heavily tilted bourgeoisie
> >> culture prevalent there.
> >>
> >> hope to read some  more comments on this by others too, which is a
> >> world wide debate at the moment
> >>
> >> love
> >> is
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 10:03 AM, SJabbar <sonia.jabbar at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>  Cornered  Princess Hijab, Paris's elusive graffiti artist
> >>> Princess Hijab daubs Muslim veils on half-naked fashion ads on the
> metro.
> >>> Why does she do it? Is she a religious fundamentalist? And is she
> really
> >>> a
> >>> woman? Angelique Chrisafis meets the elusive street artist
> >>>
> >>> Angelique Chrisafis
> >>> The Guardian,     Thursday 11 November 2010
> >>>
> >>> Just after dawn at Havre- Caumartin metro station, Paris's first
> >>> commuters
> >>> are stepping on and off half-empty trains. Then, at the end of the
> >>> platform,
> >>> a figure in black appears, head bowed and feet tapping with nerves.
> >>>
> >>> Princess Hijab is Paris's most elusive street artist. Striking at night
> >>> with
> >>> dripping black paint she slaps black Muslim veils on the half-naked
> >>> airbrushed women  and men  of the metro's fashion adverts. She calls it
> >>> "hijabisation". Her guerrilla niqab art has been exhibited from New
> York
> >>> to
> >>> Vienna, sparking debates about feminism and fundamentalism  yet her
> >>> identity remains a mystery.
> >>>
> >>> In secular republican France, there can hardly be a more potent visual
> >>> gag
> >>> than scrawling graffitied veils on fashion ads. Six years after a law
> >>> banned
> >>> headscarves and all conspicuous religious symbols from state schools,
> >>> Nicolas Sarkozy's government has banned the niqab from public spaces
> amid
> >>> a
> >>> fierce row over women's rights, islamophobia and civil liberties. The
> >>> "burqa
> >>> ban", approved last month, means that from next year it will be illegal
> >>> for
> >>> a woman to wear full-face Muslim veils in public, not just in
> government
> >>> offices or on public transport, but in the streets, supermarkets and
> >>> private
> >>> businesses. The government says it is a way of protecting women's
> rights
> >>> and
> >>> stopping them being forced by men to cover their faces.
> >>>
> >>> Already this has prompted extreme reactions. One female teacher in
> favour
> >>> of
> >>> the ban was last week given a month's suspended jail sentence for
> trying
> >>> to
> >>> rip a veil from the face of a 26-year-old Emirati tourist in a shop,
> then
> >>> slapping, scratching and biting her. On the other side of the argument,
> >>> two
> >>> French women calling themselves "niqabitch" reproduced the classic
> visual
> >>> mixed metaphor of walking around central Paris in niqabs, black
> hotpants,
> >>> bare legs and high heels, posting a film of it online in order to
> >>> highlight
> >>> the "absurdity" of the ban.
> >>>
> >>> But Princess Hijab got there first, and her simple, almost childlike
> acts
> >>> of
> >>> sabotage with a black marker pen still manage to be the most
> unsettling,
> >>> with the widest audience abroad. Yet who is she? A French Muslim woman
> in
> >>> hijab raging at the system? That would be a rare thing on Paris's
> >>> male-dominated graffiti scene. Is she a religious fundamentalist making
> a
> >>> point about female flesh? But she likes to leaves a witty smattering of
> >>> buttock cheeks and midriff on display. If she's a leftwing feminist
> >>> making a
> >>> point about the exploitation of women, it's odd that she always flees
> the
> >>> scene of her crimes. Is she even Muslim? Her fans like to imagine a
> young
> >>> rebel outsider from Paris's suburban ghettos travelling to the capital
> to
> >>> make her mark. But like Paris's greatest street artist, Blek le Rat ‹
> who
> >>> inspired Britain's Bansky ‹ she could turn out to be a fiftysomething
> >>> white
> >>> man who voted for Sarkozy.
> >>>
> >>> The Princess winds through the corridors of Havre-Caumartin sizing up
> the
> >>> advertising posters lining the walls. She has agreed to meet as she
> >>> scours
> >>> stations for targets for her next "niqab intervention". In Spandex
> >>> tights,
> >>> shorts and a hoodie, with a long black wig totally obscuring her face,
> >>> one
> >>> thing is clear; the twentysomething doesn't wear the niqab that has
> >>> become
> >>> her own signature. She won't say if she's a Muslim. In fact, it's more
> >>> than
> >>> likely that Princess Hijab isn't even a woman. There's a low note in
> her
> >>> laughter, a slight broadness to her shoulders. But the androgynous
> figure
> >>> in
> >>> black won't confirm a gender. "The real identity behind Princess Hijab
> is
> >>> of
> >>> no importance," says the husky voice behind the wig. "The imagined self
> >>> has
> >>> taken the foreground, and anyway it's an artistic choice."
> >>>
> >>> "I started doing this when I was 17," she says (I'll stick to "she" as
> >>> the
> >>> character is female, even if the person behind it is perhaps not).
> >>>
> >>> "I'd been working on veils, making Spandex outfits that enveloped
> bodies,
> >>> more classic art than fashion. And I'd been drawing veiled women on
> >>> skate-boards and other graphic pieces, when I felt I wanted to confront
> >>> the
> >>> outside world. I'd read Naomi Klein's No Logo and it inspired me to
> risk
> >>> intervening in public places, targeting advertising."
> >>>
> >>> The Princess's first graffiti veil was in 2006, the "niqabisation" of
> the
> >>> album poster of France's most famous female rapper, Diam's, who by
> >>> strange
> >>> coincidence has now converted to Islam herself. "It's intriguing
> because
> >>> she's now wearing the veil," the Princess muses. Intially she
> graffitied
> >>> men, women and children and then would stand around to gauge the
> public's
> >>> response; now she does hit-and-runs. "I don't care about people's
> >>> reactions.
> >>> I can see this makes people feel awkward and ill at ease, I can
> >>> understand
> >>> that, you're on your way home after a tough day and suddenly you're
> >>> confronted with this."
> >>>
> >>> With the Paris metro protective of its advertising spaces, her work now
> >>> usually stays up for only 45 minutes to an hour before being ripped
> down
> >>> by
> >>> officials. She has become highly selective, doing only four or five
> >>> graffiti
> >>> "interventions" in Paris a year. But each is carefully photographed and
> >>> has
> >>> its own afterlife circulating online. The "niqabised" range from Dolce
> &
> >>> Gabbana men's underwear to risque adverts for Virgin bookshops.
> >>>
> >>> Why does she do it? "I use veiled women as a challenge," she says,
> quick
> >>> to
> >>> add that she believes no one way of dressing is either good or bad.
> She's
> >>> not defending the rights of any group and no one needs her as a
> >>> spokesperson. "That's paternalistic. If veiled women want to make a
> >>> point,
> >>> they'd do it themselves. If feminists want to do something they're
> >>> capable
> >>> of doing it on their own." She later explains by email: "The veil has
> >>> many
> >>> hidden meanings, it can be as profane as it is sacred, consumerist and
> >>> sanctimonious. From Arabic Gothicism to the condition of man. The
> >>> interpretations are numerous and of course it carries great symbolism
> on
> >>> race, sexuality and real and imagined geography."
> >>>
> >>> Princess Hijab is deliberately cool and detached, but the one issue
> that
> >>> really shakes her  and perhaps reveals a little of her true identity
>  is
> >>> the place of minorities in France. Beyond the arguments about whether
> >>> Muslim
> >>> women should cover their heads, Sarkozy's new ministry of "immigration
> >>> and
> >>> national identity" and his national debate on what it means to be
> French
> >>> has
> >>> stigmatised the already discriminated and ghettoised young people of
> >>> third-
> >>> and fourth-generation immigrant descent. France has the largest Muslim
> >>> population in Europe, but the prevailing anti-immigrant discourse, and
> >>> what
> >>> many view as a pointless burqa ban, has increased the feelings of
> >>> marginalisation felt by young Muslims and minorities.
> >>>
> >>> Princess Hijab sees herself as part of a new "graffiti of minorities"
> >>> reclaiming the streets. "If it was only about the burqa ban, my work
> >>> wouldn't have a resonance for very long. But I think the burqa ban has
> >>> given
> >>> a global visibility to the issue of integration in France," she says.
> "We
> >>> definitely can't keep closing off and putting groups in boxes, always
> >>> reducing them to the same old questions about religion or urban
> violence.
> >>> Education levels are better and we can't have the old Manichean
> discourse
> >>> any more."
> >>>
> >>> She adds: "Liberty, equality, fraternity, that's a republican
> principle,
> >>> but
> >>> in reality the issue of minorities in French society hasn't really
> >>> evolved
> >>> in half a century. The outsiders in France are still the poor, the
> Arabs,
> >>> black and of course, the Roma."
> >>>
> >>> The Princess won't say what her own roots are. She simply says she sees
> >>> her
> >>> work as a kind of "cartography of crime" a mapping out of the
> underbelly
> >>> of
> >>> the city where "I bring inside everything that's been excreted out."
> >>>
> >>> And yet her graffiti is particularly French in its anti-consumerism and
> >>> ad-busting stance. For her, painting a veil on adverts works visually
> >>> because the two are "dogmas that can be questioned". She feels young
> >>> women
> >>> wearing the hijab who were once stigmatised by French institutions are
> >>> now
> >>> being targeted for their purchasing power, the "perfect customers" in
> >>> France's increasingly consumerist society.
> >>>
> >>> Her next spree will focus on her favourite target brand, H&M. After
> all,
> >>> its
> >>> ad campaigns are plastered all over the Paris metro. She argues that
> the
> >>> brand "democratised" fashion at low prices, women in hijab often shop
> >>> there,
> >>> and inking out H&M models is the perfect act of confrontation: "It's
> >>> visually very striking because [the brand's] images are ideologically
> >>> very
> >>> present in the urban landscape."
> >>>
> >>> So these blacked-out niqabs seem to represent everything but religion.
> >>> "Am I
> >>> religious?" she asks, hesitating. "The spiritual interests me, but
> that's
> >>> personal, I don't think it bears on my work. Religion interests me,
> >>> Muslims
> >>> interest me and the impact they can have, artistically, aesthetically,
> in
> >>> the codes that are all around us, particularly in fashion," she muses.
> >>>
> >>> And with that, the graffiti performance artist scuttles off, kit-bag
> over
> >>> her shoulder, to change out of her bizarre disguise and into her own
> >>> everyday fashion and wander off above ground into the daylight.
> >>>
> >>> guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
> >>> _________________________________________
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> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >> http://indersalim.livejournal.com
> >> _________________________________________
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> >> Critiques & Collaborations
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> >
> > ---------------------------------------
> > Dr. Britta Ohm
> >
> > Institute of Social Anthropology
> > University of Bern
> > Laenggassstr. 49a
> > 3012 Bern
> > Switzerland
> > +41-(0)31-631 8995 (main office)
> > +41-(0)31-631 5373 (direct line)
> > britta.ohm at anthro.unibe.ch
> >
> >
> > Solmsstr. 36
> > 10961 Berlin
> > Germany
> > +49-(0)30-69507155
> > ohm at zedat.fu-berlin.de
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
>
> http://indersalim.livejournal.com
> _________________________________________
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