During travels through Morocco in 2020, I learned that Jewish, Muslim, and Amazigh women have shared a unique fluidity of culture and tradition for hundreds of years – and became intrigued. “Searching for the Kahina,” is my creative response - part travelogue, part archive, part fact, part flight of fancy – it’s a visual journey through these overlapping, interwoven narratives. Their stories and myths, religious beliefs and superstitions, personal adornment symbols, and handicraft motifs all found their way into my work. I drew further inspiration and imagery from an archive of early 20th C. postcards made by French male photographers, who, with their colonialist and Orientalist point-of-view, depicted Magrebi women as souvenir "types." Referencing the images of these women directly, I asked questions about their lives beyond the costumes and backdrops that purported to define them. I intentionally removed these women from posed, imposed settings, and placed them in freshly imagined ones — a woman’s world far from where they were seen as exotic, sexualized “others.”
Blue is a strong spiritual force against the Evil Eye in North Africa, and women are its gatekeepers. Cyanotype, with its profound blueness, became my ideal expressive and contextual medium. Natural toners, Near Eastern symbols and calligraphy, gold leaf, ink, and stitchery helped to shape a collaged yet cohesive and relevant visual language for telling these stories. The resulting work challenges how women were, and still are, seen by men. Between moments of intense research and artistic invention, I’ve considered an alternate space where women look directly back and hold the gaze.
CODA: Since the events of October 7, as a female, Jewish photographer, these stories of Jewish-Muslim-Amazigh co-existence and friendship have become overwhelmingly more personal and emotionally poignant for me. My instinct tells me that if women were in charge, things could look very different in the Middle East today.
Website
https://frumamarkowitz.photo
Collaborating Artist
Fruma Markowitz
