Beyond your Eyes

  

Mariam Hegazy

My art work is about the misconceptions of the women in Islam who wear the hijab. I used photography in my project to show the art and beauty of the work. My project displays the art of true beauty without the hijab. It then shows the first step of the idea of wearing the hijab and that it can slowly appear in a woman’s thoughts. She then decides to wear the hijab and it covers her beauty. The way I showed the hijab in my project is different than how women wear the hijab in real life to add mystery to the art piece. It shows how beauty can be easily transformed by a simple thought.

Most of the people in our world today judge a person by their appearance. They see with their eyes and make their own conceptions about a person before they give them a chance to speak. Several women in Islam are considered to be very religious and strict because they wear the hijab.

Some are even thought to be oppressed and subjugated because of their hijab. These stereotypes are given by those who don’t understand Islam and don’t understand why wearing the hijab is important in religion. 

The hijab was made to hide the beauty of a woman. It covers her hair, which can be the most beautiful feature in a woman, and her body. In Islam, a woman is like a pearl, pure and innocent. The hijab is like the shell that protects the pearl from any scratches or injuries, thus protecting the woman from the strangers around her.

I was inspired by two artists from the Middle East called Shadi Ghadirian and Shirin Neshat. They both create great artworks that show how women are viewed in Islam and the challenges they face due to the international preconceptions of women’s roles in an Islamic nation.

Shadi Ghadirian was born in 1974 in Tehran, Iran where she lives and works. She studied photography in Azad University in Tehran then began her professional career as a photographer. The subjects of her first two series were women.

Shirin Neshat was born in 1957 in Qazvin, Iran. She’s a visual artist who lives in New York City. She studied art in Los Angeles and she currently works in film, video and photography about Islamic art.