My recent work explores the influence of culture and religion on the status of women. With my drawings I strive to expose the conflicting and struggling situations that many women experience while trying to perform an accretion of contrasting roles concurrently, each one with its distinctive pressures. These depictions are coined from personal experiences, observations from news, documentaries and from my female friends’ anecdotes.
In today’s society women are still challenged to achieve gender equality across the world against various boundaries. They are struggling to accomplish diverse social, cultural, and religious expectations such as gaining social and economic freedom and being perfect daughters, wives and mothers. In some societies women are looking for equal payment and political voice while in conservative societies they hope to be sent to school instead of becoming child brides. Meanwhile another pressure for being a perfect woman is promoted by the media as daily impositions of being successful both at home and work yet stay fit and sexy.
My drawings capture routine natural facial expressions and hand postures of women from a variety of cultures. They depict inter-role struggles of both modern and traditional women’s experiences in their everyday lives. By drawing the imperfect appearances and skin of faces I generate contrast to unnatural photo-shopped faces on mainstream media and expose the dilemma many of us experience while fulfilling our responsibilities and asserting our independence at the same time.
