Cartographies of Cloth

As we must know, the hijab has been historically considered in Euro-America a symbol of difference between east and west. The hijab was also mostly seen and described as awful regarding gender, politics, visuality, and the conception of self. Even France still has a law against it.
Surprisingly, the Muslim woman’s veil constitutes a common site in Euro-American visual culture. Contemporary veil art has helped inspire some scholarship which has begun to broach the topic of the veil specifically, examining its role in colonial, modernist, feminist, and Muslim discourses, probing its resurgence east and west, and analyzing its significance in media representations. Arguing in support of the veil’s multivalence and seeking to rectify the dearth of many studies on the topic, this book initiates a mapping of the veil in contemporary art, underscoring the alternative narratives to mainstream the representations it proffers and exploring its myriad meanings and its link to the wider issues of gender, politics, and identity. I hope the book will truly inspire our important multiculturalism.