Jowhara AlSaud: Doves, 2008

This image from Jowhara AlSaud’s series Out of Line comments on censorship in Saudi Arabia and its effects on visual communication. There are regions in Saudi Arabia where lines are still drawn across throats in photographs, figuratively cutting the head off. Faces are blurred on billboards. Skirts and sleeves are crudely lengthened with black markers on women’s outfits in magazines. Art, as everything else here, is governed by Islamic law. Figurative work is still considered by many to be sinful. 

AlSaud began applying the language of the censors to personal photographs, making line drawings, omitting faces, and keeping only the essentials. This preserved the anonymity of her subjects, which allowing her more freedom as it is still taboo to have one’s portrait hanging in a gallery or someone else’s home. When reduced to sketches, the images achieved enough distance from the original photographs that neither subjects nor censors could find them objectionable. They became autonomous, minimal narratives. In etching these drawings back into film and printing them in an analogue darkroom, she points to the malleability of the medium before even the advances and accessibility of digital manipulation. It becomes a highly coded and self-reflexive language.

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