Afghanistan has known decades of conflict, from the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, to the brutal civil war of the 1990s that saw the rise of the Taliban regime, and the American War on Terror that began in 2001 and rages on to this day. Foreign soldiers and mercenaries, mujahedeen, Taliban fighters, Al-Qaeda insurgents, men – armed and dangerous men, in particular – have long dominated the image Afghanistan projects to the rest of the world, the artifact of the Cold War residual left in Afghanistan’s back yard. At the same time, the unsung women of the nation have been ignored, or portrayed with a dehumanized stereotype, a demoralized and marginalized image sapped of quintessence. They are shown as veiled primitives inferior to their Western counterparts, in a biased narrative promoting Eurocentric ideals while ignoring the stark truth, that they are human beings, with human experiences, and their own voices. This is the bland, un-nuanced and misinformed stereotype that The Afghan Mona Lisa repudiates. Through her work, Zereh gives them a chance to speak out for themselves, on their own terms, in an unprejudiced manner undiluted by the lens of Western preconceptions.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 20:29:42 +0000
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