Veil Series Part II, 2007

The Veil series presents a spectacular fusion of female stereotypes from east and west. The veil has become a symbol of Islam‟s contested sociality, whether when imposed on all women by Islamic regimes in Saudi Arabia or Iran, or declared „unwelcome‟ by Sarkozy in France. Even so, the veiled woman has become one of the most commonly recognisable aesthetic tropes of the Islamic world, whether in the transparent veils of 19th-century Orientalist fantasy or the black chadors of the tragic protagonists in Shirin Neshat‟s work.

Rana‟s Veil images are frontal portraits of women whose faces are heavily shrouded, immediately evoking the irony, of making portraits of faces that cannot be seen. Rana seems to point to the dehumanization of women under orthodox Islam, particularly as the veils shown are those that symbolize the place of women under the Taliban. Drawing near, it becomes obvious that the works are composed of thousands of instances of hard-core pornography downloaded from the internet.

Rana's unlikely juxtaposition becomes comprehensible as a coalescence of the same. The thousands of naked women are as depersonalized as the women behind the veil. Ultimately both kinds of women disappear and what remains is the controlling gaze which produces both kinds of coercion involved - in the covering and uncovering of the body.