Good afternoon, everyone. My name's Grace Ali. And I am here to talk about the veil, but the veil as a tool of sabotage. So the first thing's first, let's locate the veil in its geographical and cultural context. Here in the West, when we talk about the veil, we talk about these lovely numbers in gauze and lace and tulle. I don't know about you. But I have all of these in my closet. And of course, we're talking about the Western, the wedding veil as well. So my work is in media. I run a magazine called OF NOTE Magazine. And we look at this beautiful marriage of art and activism. And so I'm always constantly thinking about the politics of representation in the media, the politics of headlines, how we make the decision to chose one word over the other when we're describing something. And when the Western media reports on the Western veil, the headlines are usually quite complementary. InStyle says the veil is the fashion accessory for Couture Week. And just this spring, Vogue declared that the veil was having a comeback. Although I would argue, I don't think it went anywhere. And when you do a close reading of the language itself within these reporting, the descriptors used to describe the veil are equally nice and complimentary. The veil is my favorite. The veil is vintage glamor. It's seductive, it's mysterious. When we put the veil in an Eastern context and we talk about the Muslim veil, we're talking about these forms of the veil. And we're talking about the hijab, which covers the head, the niqab, which covers the head and the face and just the eyes are visible, and the burka, which is the full-body veil. But something begins to shift when we look at how the media reports on this kind of veil. Vanity Fair declares it tearing off the veil. The style section of the New York Times writes the veil and its challenges. And The New Yorker, just this month, a few days ago, reported on the culture wars that continue. And the lead image was the model from H&M, the first model in H&M to wear a hijab in their campaign. And so you can see in the language of the headlines, a sort of tension reflected and even at times, a kind of violent language reflected in the headlines. And then, when we also do the close reading here of the descriptors of the Muslim veil in the articles, you find terms like repressive and oppressive, and encaged, invisible. Many of you, speaking of headlines, have probably seen that the Muslim veil, the Eastern veil, has been in the headlines quite often. And what that reflects is this growing movement globally to ban the veil. These are the countries that have placed bans on the veil worn publicly in some shape or form. Belgium, France, The Netherlands, China, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Switzerland all have some kind of ban on the veil. And attempted bans have sparked heated debates in Australia, in the United Kingdom, and just last year as Canada went through its national elections. Thankfully, that legislation was shot down thanks to Trudeau. So the veil is no longer a marker of religious identity. It's certainly not a garment to express a kind of desire to separate sacred space from public space. It has become representative of something much larger, a symbol of fear and of the other. So MoMA, and my lovely friend Paola, invited me to talk to you today about the veil, because earlier this year our magazine focused completely on the veil, particularly the burqa. And we looked at women artists, most of them were from the Middle East, who were using the veil as an object in their artistic practice. And what was interesting about these women artists were that they weren't interesting in engaging this predictable question about the Western gaze on the veil. And they certainly weren't even interested in continuing a conversation, this binary question of is the veil a symbol of oppression or is a symbol of religious freedom? They found those to be the easy questions actually. What they were interested in was something much more provocative. They were interested in a counternarrative. They were interested in lifting the veil out of a state of victimhood and looking at how it can be used as a tool of sabotage. And so speaking of language, I wanted to remind us what the definition of sabotage is. And that is a deliberate action aimed at weakening an institution through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. And so I wanted to share with you three of those contemporary artists and how they are using the veil as a tool of sabotage. This is Mariam Magsi, one of my favorites from the issue. And Mariam is Pakistani-born, but currently works in Toronto, and lives in Toronto, and bore witness to that vitriolic debate last year in Canada's election to ban the veil. She grew up in the culture of women that did veil. And her practice, her work, is about representing LGBTQ communities who wear the veil. And I'd like to share with you in her own words what her practice is about. Mariam Magsi says, for queer Muslims, closeted due to fear of alienating family and immense societal pressure, I look at how several of the LGBTQ community, in Iran, for example, or Saudi Arabia used a niqab and burka to express taboo love in restrictive and policed societies where their actions are considered deviant and punishable. See what's interesting and provocative about Mariam Magsi's work is she's actually not interested in the veil itself. She's more interested in the subversive bodies underneath the veil and how those bodies are able to express a range of gender and sexual identities because of the veil, not in spite of it. Next is Princess Hijab. And Princess Hijab is a Paris-based street artist who tags ads in the city's metro stations, especially those ads that feature scantily clad women's bodies, which I think at this point in our culture are all ads. [LAUGH] And she uses, if you look at closely, she uses a very pedestrian tool to do so. She uses a simple thick black marker to veil these women in black. And again, I'd like to quote the artist in her own words about why she chooses to veil these women in this ads. Princess Hijab says, I choose the veil because it does what art should do. It challenges, it frightens, and it reimagines. And I think what she's challenging us to ask is a very simple question. And that is, when, and why, and how do we continue to normalize the hypersexed body, to normalize the hyper-sexualized body, but it is the covered body that jars us? It is the covered body that stops us and gives us pause. And finally, this is Behnaz Babazadeh. And yes, that is cotton candy on the right. And Behnaz is an artist and designer and a graduate of the Parsons School of Design here in New York. So she thinks very critically about the marriage of fashion and design, down to its very micro-level, meaning the thing, the substance, a thing is made of. And Behnaz spent her childhood in Afghanistan and Iran and had a positive relationship with the veil. And she speaks very candidly though about an experience she had while at Parsons of putting on the burka and going into her school and also walking through Times Square. As you can imagine, the response was hostile. The response was vitriolic. And it left really, really strong impression on her. So in response she questioned, what if I made veils and burkas, but changed the substance of the thing? So she created these burkas using sweet things, Fruit Loops, and gummy bears, and sugar cubes, and on the left, red licorice, and on the right, cotton candy. And what she's asking us to really think about is, if we changed the substance of a thing, if we changed a material of the thing, can we also change its meaning? Can we strip it of its politics? Can we strip it of its vitriol? And in her case she could. Because when she experimented with these veils on and these burkas on, she enticed people. She drew people to her as opposed to repelling them. And so to come back to this question of what we've all been debating here today, is fashion modern? And in this case, is the veil modern? I think yes. Because what can be more modern, more revolutionary, than taking back the very thing that's become a tool of fear and othering and using it as a tool to sabotage that very fear? Thank you. >> [APPLAUSE]
