UCLA

Representations of the veiled woman dominate Western collections of contemporary Middle Eastern art. They are also, however, symbolically inextricable from power structures that propagate derogatory tropes of Arab culture, and their proliferation hinders more incisive inquiries into issues of gender in the Middle East. This paper examines how two Middle Eastern photographers, responding to this predicament, have begun to posit new ways of representing resistant bodies, departing from the tired trope of the veil and, in fact, from the female body altogether. An alternative framework for contesting gender relations in the Middle East and associated Western stereotypes can be found in photographic explorations of masculinity, such as Tanya Habjouqa’s Fragile Monsters (2009) and Tamara Abdul Hadi’s Picture an Arab Man (2009). I argue that these works represent a potential for new and productive inquiries, and innovative means of articulating gendered bodies as resistant to imperialist categories of gender and sexuality.