What Lies Beneath her Folds

This painting-installation series offers a personal perspective on the abaya and its paradoxical nature of revealing through concealing, portraying it as a second skin. The artist questions how a piece made to cover, reduce visibility or redact the female body reveals a woman’s religiosity, her social status as well as her intention when leaving the house. The abaya, an everyday object worn in public, is depicted in this body of work at the moment the female figure peels it off, discarding it in the domestic interior.

What the Abaya holds in weight, lightness, tension or ease lies in each fold.