Hoda Afshar’s series "Under Western Eyes" comprises digitally manipulated photographs that are designed to shift the conversation around the representation of Islamic women as subjugated and suppressed. Afshar, who is originally from Iran now lives in Melbourne where she is a practicing photographic artist.
Afshar believes "Veiled women are often described as a homogeneous group and mostly pictured as powerless subjects with their veil either symbolizing oppression or an exotic commodity...
“In Western societies, the veil is mostly seen as unknown, threatening and mysterious and it always provokes strong reactions and counter-reactions. What is quite interesting to me though, is the paradoxical nature of these reactions that are often changed by the world events and responses towards Muslim communities.”Afshar says her intention with this series is to “question the system in which these stereotypes are fabricated and commoditized and also question the works of many of the artists of Muslim background whose practices feed into this climate of sympathy for Islamic women”.
Afshar doesn’t dispute the veil “as a forced enclosure” and has no intention “to deny the oppression of many women in Islamic regions. I just believe that this issue has been strongly highlighted, overtly discussed and has become the only expected theme in representing the identity of Muslim women in the West. I do not judge that all the women who wear the veil are forced into it; for many it is a personal choice that they make based on their religious or cultural beliefs. Not all women of the Islamic background wear the veil or share the same belief or ideology, but unfortunately in the West, we only get to hear the voices of misery and negativity”.
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