WASHINGTON, DC.- A landmark exhibition of photographs by 12 contemporary women artists from Iran and the Arab world will be on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts from April 8–July 31, 2016. She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World challenges stereotypes surrounding the people, landscapes, and cultures of the region, and provides insight into political and social issues. The exhibition presents more than 80 photographs and a video installation. These provocative works—most created within the last decade—range in genre from portraiture, to documentary, to staged narratives.

She Who Tells a Story explores themes of identity, war, occupation, and protest. It refutes the conventional idea that Arab and Iranian women are oppressed or powerless, illuminating the fact that women are creating some of the most significant photographic work in the region today. The exhibition features artists Jananne Al-Ani, Boushra Almutawakel, Gohar Dashti, Rana El Nemr, Lalla Essaydi, Shadi Ghadirian, Tanya Habjouqa, Rula Halawani, Nermine Hammam, Rania Matar, Shirin Neshat, and Newsha Tavakolian.

“These groundbreaking artists challenge us to rethink our preconceived notions about Arab and Iranian women and their art,” said NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling. “They invite us to stand in their shoes and see the extraordinarily striking complexities they face. The exhibition highlights their triumphs and struggles, which we hope will stimulate and enhance cultural dialogue on a personal as well as national level.”

The title of the exhibition was inspired by the Arabic word rawiya, which means “she who tells a story.” It is also the name of a small collective of women photographers based in the Middle East, which was founded in 2009. Each artist in the exhibition offers a vision of the world she has witnessed, and each image invites viewers to confront their own preconceptions.

“Women have been pioneers in the mediums of photography and video since their inception,” said NMWA Chief Curator Kathryn Wat. “This exhibition demonstrates that the work of women photographers continues to resonate on a global scale.”

The artists and their work are presented within categories that show photographers deconstructing the stereotypes of Orientalism, constructing subjects’ identities and creating new forms of documentary. Many of the photographers explore questions of identity through an evolving set of narratives, often in response to cultural stereotypes surrounding the Middle East.

Deconstructing Orientalism and Constructing Identities
Many of the photographers in this section explore questions of identity through an evolving and shifting set of narratives that must be understood as a response to Orientalism. Historically, Orientalism refers to depictions about the East, including Middle Eastern, North African and Eastern cultures, by European or American artists and writers, which can promote stereotypes about the regions.

Shirin Neshat’s Speechless (1996), from the “Women of Allah” series (1993–97), is an outcome of a visit she made to her native Iran 15 years after the Iranian Revolution. The series marked a turning point in the recent history of representation and debates about the veiled female figure, inspiring exploration by other artists.

Moroccan-born Lalla Essaydi uses iconography from 19th-century Orientalist paintings as inspiration to explore and question her own cultural identity. In the 5 1/2 x 12 1/2-foot triptych Bullets Revisited #3 (2012), she uses calligraphy, a characteristically male art form, to suggest the complexity of gender roles within Islamic culture.

The Yemeni artist Boushra Almutawakel’s series “Mother, Daughter, Doll” (2010) challenges the rise of religious extremism, increasingly pervasive in Yemen and neighboring countries. The staged portraits do not denounce the hijab, but visually protest the covering of young girls. Another portrait shows a young woman veiling herself with the American flag, questioning the charged symbolism of the headscarf.

In the intimate portraits that constitute Lebanese-born Rania Matar’s series “A Girl and Her Room” (2011), young women pose comfortably in their bedrooms—their personal havens. Personal and poetic, this documentary exploration of female identity and belongings reflects universally shared experiences of coming of age and the complexities of being a young woman.

Newsha Tavakolian presents portraits of professional singers who, as women, are forbidden by Islamic tenets to perform in public or to record music in their native country of Iran. A video shows women emotionally mouthing unheard words, suggesting the idea of imposed silence.

New Documentary
Other works in the exhibition bring artistic imagination to the documentation of real-life experiences. Themes of war, occupation, protest and revolt as well as concerns about photography as a medium are reflected in this new genre.

As one of Iran’s leading contemporary photographers, Shadi Ghadirian explores contemporary life in a postrevolutionary Iranian society with a focus on the role of women of her generation. In her series “Nil, Nil” (2008–09), military objects are contrasted with feminine elements to form domestic still lifes.

Gohar Dashti, who lives and works in Tehran, stages theatrical photographs in her series “Today’s Life and War” (2008), in which a couple pursues ordinary activities in a fictionalized battlefield, juxtaposing discreet and overt signs of military presence.

Egyptian Rana El Nemr and Jordanian Tanya Habjouqa both directly capture urban stories in photographs that address questions of space, identity and the sense of belonging. El Nemr’s “The Metro” series (2003) records the rapid changes being experienced by middle-class urban Egyptians. Habjouqa’s “Women of Gaza” series (2009) features some of her most powerful and poignant images of the plight of women in the coastal community of Gaza as they struggle to normalize life within the conditions of oppression.

Rula Halawani, a Palestinian living in East Jerusalem who has a background as a photojournalist, created the series “Negative Incursions” (2002) to address the experience of displacement and destruction. She enlarges and prints negatives without reversing their values, producing the effect of night-vision camera images used for military or scientific purposes.

Cairo-based Nermine Hammam’s series Cairo Year One (2011–12) addresses the 18-day uprising in Egypt in January 2011 and its aftermath. A number of her prints blend photographs of soldiers in Tahrir Square with bucolic landscapes sourced from postcards. The series likens the events of Tahrir Square to a tourist attraction—while it drew the world’s attention, it was not fully understood. Codes of My Kin reproduces the controversial image from the Arab Spring of a woman, later referred to in the press as the Blue Bra Girl, being dragged on the ground by soldiers.

Iraqi-born Jananne Al-Ani depicts the Jordanian landscape from an airplane using both still and moving images. Reminiscent of wartime aerial reconnaissance photography, the images feature land that bears traces of natural and manmade activity as well as ancient and contemporary structures that testify to loss and history.