Watercolor on paper |
لوحات مائية على ورق |
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The Story Behind This Collection
Some feel these images are too sexy. Others tell me I am courageous to create and post them. And others think they are offensive - or, my favourite Arabic word to hate "Ayeb", which means shameful. * This collection started off as a tribute to my maternal grandmother who died of breast cancer. The meaning behind the work changed and evolved to include all women who passed on, and those who survived and thrived beyond the cancer. As I created more and more of these women, and they began to populate my studio, I realized they are a tribute to all women. They are a vision; a statement about women's bodies and how they are viewed by others and even more by ourselves. * Every morning I look at my body in the mirror. Some might already find this statement shocking, sensationalist, egotistical, provocative. In truth, it is none of that. I’m not looking for flaws. I’m not searching for affirmations to repeat to myself ten times a day. I’m not looking to condone or abuse. I’m looking at my body and I can’t think of it as embarrassing, or shameful. I look at my body to see all of me. To be grateful. To remember that this body is also my mind and my spirit. |
The whole connected package. Rather, the one. Not a package, but the single form that is everything. I look at it and I realize I would be nothing without it. I could do nothing without it. How can I listen to those who say I should be ashamed of it?
* This collection is not about perfection. Or beauty. Or sex. It is about everything being woman, about taking charge of your own body. About freeing your mind from all the taboos connected to a body you did not choose but in which you will live for the next few decades. About this tangible form which will give you so much strength, joy, movement, pleasure, and pain. About how you connect with your own body, and how you choose to treat it and think of it. * This body will teach you much if you let it. It will take you places, if you stop thinking about it as a monument or a temple or a place where taboo terrorists hide. If you stop using it as a tool to manipulate yourself and others, or to damn, hate, belittle yourself and others. Once you simply let go of all negatives and positives about your body. It’s a tool for living a life that will fulfill you, if you stop thinking of it as something separate. * Once you realize it is what it is. This is not your body. This is you. |
*Actual colors may vary slightly from photos.
