Behind the Curtain

Aisha Khalid's work is an embodiment of the 70 adage: the personal is the political. Her paintings belie contentious issues on gender and patriarchy, power structures, and the claustrophobia and inertia stemming from the domestic terrain. Her attire and the symbolism it begets is not an abstract concept but an everyday reality. (Y. Dalmia and S. Hashmi, Memory, Metaphor, Mutations : Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 83.) In this delicate image depicting an anonymous female figure clad in a burqa one can extract alternate interpretations of a half-shell, a drowned figure, or yet a womb. Khalid embarked upon this series using the burqa as her leitmotif in 2000, yet the imagery crystallized post 9/11 as "the burqa, which Khalid used to address complex negotiations between the self and society, became a global icon signifying women's oppression and simplistically implicating Islam as its root cause. The motif highlights the Western media's exploitation of women's bodies to legitimize the invasion of Afghanistan in the name of 'liberation.'" (H. Nasar and A. Sloan, "Postcards to Empire: The Politics of Resistance in the Karkhana Project," Khrkhana: A Contemporary Collaboration, 2005, p. 34).