Voice (re)Claimed
In this interdisciplinary project, I collaborated with my friend and conceptual artist, Manal Al-Dowayan, to create an installation that represents the interconnected nature of local and global discourses about the social category “Saudi woman”. We jointly conducted video-taped qualitative interviews with Saudi Arabian women across the country to contrast women’s rich narratives about their lives with the reductionist representations surrounding them. We also documented our process through a series of exchanges in the form of a blog in order to theorize about collaborative feminist projects. The project allowed us to go beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries: books are tactile and material objects rather than simply texts to be read, digital autoethnography practice as research, and space/time boundaries for “producing knowledge” that challenge traditional forms of either artistic or social scientific practice.
The Process
Thinking and experimenting with process is an important feature of my own writing and teaching. Through a research-art fellowship from NYU we were able to conduct our research while reflecting on our process through a series of dialogic exchanges. These reflections are informal, humorous, and in some cases, can be only understood if read against the grain.
The Installation
During the experimental phase of the project, we showed the installation in the studio of my collaborator in Dubai during Art Dubai. The installation attracted over 180 people from artistic and academic institutions who visited the studio as part of their VIP visits program. Examples of visitors included: Grazer Kunstverein museum group (Austria), Museum Dhondt Dhaenens museum group (Belgium), the Davis Museum group at Wellesley College (U.S.), Serpentine Gallery (London, UK), and 7 faculty members from NYUNY and NYUAD who came with a group of 18 students.