DRESSING UNDRESSING RELIGIONS AND THE SOUL - Majida Khattari

This picture puts into perspective three womens' models .The woman prisoner of the veil but free inside herself from the "use"of her body made by men ..just because no men can see her and therefore cannot use her...In the middle the naked woman ,as she really is in front of God ..just the shoes and the head cover are a beginning of "intrusion" ...the black woman in the vanishing point is probabbly the solution and the annihilation...

The "written figure" . Nor clear if a woman or a man. The embodiment itself of the hermaphrodite soul ...

The Model in her three aspects , trying to free all of them at the same time and struggling to survive this freedoom to whom she is not accoustomed.The face bursts out from the garment that was designed to cover the body ..or to just sell a "shape" of fabric using the body .

Majida is an artist born in 1966 in Erfoud, Morocco, Khattari studied fine arts in Casablanca, before moving to Paris to continue her studies. She is now based in Paris. Since 1996, Khattari has been organising performance art runway shows based around the theme of women in Islam today, as well as current issues of politics and religion in general. Khattari stages fashion shows as political performances by linking Western fashion to Islamic codes of dress and behaviour.
Her clothes are not simply designed to flatter the wearer; instead they are created to restrict movement and conspicuously to conceal or reveal different parts of the body.

Closer to performance art than to a classic runway show, Majida Khattari’s presentation of clothing and live sculpture art was her contribution to the debate raging about the head-to-toe Islamic veil in France.
The Franco-Moroccan artist turned burqas, niqabs, hijabs, and sefsaris -all types of Islamic veil- into a sort of artistic battle flag, allowing her to merge visual expression with her interest in - and convictions about - matters of politics and religion.

One of her pieces was a burqa made of thick, dark-coloured wool. Another burqa resembled a patchwork of clothing. Later in the show, a model’s naked silhouette was discernible beneath a thin black veil. The final piece was strikingly paradoxical; a burqa displaying a printed identity portrait of the woman wearing it.

The idea of a show dedicated to the burqa emerged from the French debate about the wearing of Islamic heardscarfs in state schools. Without directly giving her opinion on the matter, Khattari is trying above all to incite dialogue.

"I find that every time there is a crisis, the female body comes under fire, and I can’t help wondering about this phenomenon,” Khattari explained.

The artist was careful to point out that religion is not the only source of oppression of women.

“The reality of the imprisonment of women’s bodies is not only related to the headscarf,” she said.
“In the fashion world, for example, models all have the same body and the same look. I think it’s the same kind of imprisonment as the burqa. It was interesting for me to examine, side-by-side, these two types of imprisonment, one of which is condemned and one of which is accepted as something natural”. That reasoning helps explain why Khattari chose to have one model walk out almost totally naked, surrounded by others draped in burqas.