THIS IS THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS
June 2013
Torino, Italy
one channel HD video
4:08 min
color, sound
filmed and edited by the artist
The desire to explore the lands that surround the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the willingness to establish relations with its people, give me the enthusiasm to create interventions and situations that become methods of exploration and reflection.
What struck my attention, is the proud awareness with which Muslim women wear the veil. Over the years I have made many portraits of Muslim women who I met and I was impressed in the memory. I'm fascinated by the veil. So much to investigate the reasons that push those women to assume such a marked and unequivocal identity.
A research conducted in this direction must begin from the study of the Koran and the sources of Islamic law, studies that I conducted during the university period at law school, concluded with a thesis in Islamic law entitled: The veil, Islamic sources and recent developments in Turkey.
In 2013, a Moroccan girl told me: when I wear the veil and I speak with a man, he is obliged to look at me in the eyes, establishing an equal comparison, without the sensuality of my hair and the voluptuousness of my forms can take over.
This thought, so lucid and determined, was a source of inspiration for a video, in which the girl stands in front of the camera while she is wearing the veil, repeating a daily gesture. In the Islamic religion, it is forbidden to the woman to show herself without veil to foreign men, or those who are not part of the family.
Wearing the veil is a choice that changes the way of life of a woman, marking her presence in the public space. A garment is able to communicate much more than many words.
The video was shot in a totally amateur situation into an apartment in Turin. Two moments of the video, the initial and final one, they release an image of the girl whose identity appears split, so much so that it seems to attend a kind of transformation.