Appearance Stripped Bare

I use photography to interrogate the concept of the European Renaissance as an isolated phenomenon, rather than a period in organic conversation with movements that had started earlier in the Middle East. I explore the impact of the broader Mediterranean culture and ideas that helped spark and inform Europe’s rebirth, juxtaposed against the present-day collisions of culture, by placing my body as a contemporary Middle Eastern woman within the imagery and iconography of the Italian Renaissance. Challenging the idea of European and Middle Eastern otherness that the people and cultures were more intertwined and inter-influenced than what we usually think.