“A PORTRAIT OF INANNA” by Sundus Abdul Hadi

 “Inanna in Damascus” is not my best work, nor does it represent the breadth of my portfolio. It is not the most technical in its execution, nor is it the most conceptual of my works. However, it has had the most impact on my life as an artist in more ways than one. It has been exhibited, written about and debated. It has also been misrepresented, censored and banned. 

It is worth mentioning that any work with the intention to shock or provoke for the sake of controversy or attention doesn’t appeal to me. I'd like to believe that the intention behind my work is to intellectually and visually engage in order to create dialogue about social issues. 

The subject of this artwork is the crisis of young Iraqi refugee girls forced into prostitution, a sad reality born out of displacement and poverty. Taboos aside, the subject is a humanitarian issue, of basic human rights taken away. 

Here I share the story behind “Inanna in Damascus” in my own words, and the journey it has taken me through. It is through this painting that I learnt many valuable lessons about misrepresentation, the intersections between politics and the art industry, and how art can act as a mirror of society. It has also taught me how an artwork about a refugee crisis can trace the same path as its subject. 

The story has many chapters, the first starting before it was even conceived. 

CHAPTER 1: THE STUDENT

I studied Studio Art and Art History in my undergraduate degree at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. On my first day of class in 2002 I sat wide-eyed in the Art History 200 level class, nervously waiting for it to start. The professor introduced the class by reading from a report written by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni titled “Defending Civilization: How our Universities are failing America and what can be done about it”.

She read:

“At a time of national crisis, I think it is particularly apparent that we need to encourage the study of our past. Our children and grandchildren—indeed, all of us—need to know the ideas and ideals on which our nation has been built. We need to understand how fortunate we are to live in freedom. We need to understand that living in liberty is such a precious thing that generations of men and women have been willing to sacrifice everything for it. We need to know, in a war, exactly what is at stake. “  - Lynne V. Cheney

The professor continued by saying that the report, endorsed by Lynne Cheney, (then- vice president Dick Cheney’s wife), states that Universities that teach Islamic and Arabic culture and history are in fact supporting the terrorist acts of 9/11 and are sympathetic to the terrorists. 

I was sure that she would throw the report away and say, “Absolutely not! That’s all propaganda!” But to my surprise, she said:

…. “and that’s why, in this class I’ll only be teaching you about the achievements in Western art history.”

I was in shock. I expected someone to stand up and protest against her ignorance and racism… I wanted so badly to walk out of the auditorium in protest but my knees were locked and my tongue was tied… instead, I stared blankly into space, shocked and saddened by the state of our world. As soon as the professor called for a break, I walked out of the class and dropped the course.  

I then registered for “Issues in Ethnocultural Art History”. It was there that I was introduced to critical perspectives on Orientalism, Primitivism, post-colonialism and other isms…

A week later I was reading Edward Said’s “Orientalism”. I was hooked. Edward Said describes Orientalism as:

“The corporate institution for dealing with the Orient- dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” 

Artists from France and England dabbled in subjects of the Orient during the nineteenth century, such as Jean Leon Gerome and Delacroix, amongst other European artists. Their work has since been the subject of much theoretical analysis of the relationship between the Orient and the Occident by theorists such as Edward Said. 

Much of the work that European artists executed in the subject matter of the Orient was largely fabricated from second-hand experiences, and produced in a fantastical and imaginary studio environment. 

CHAPTER 2: THE ROOTS

Flash forward to 2007. A good friend forwarded me a call for submissions for an exhibition to be held in commemoration of International Woman’s Day titled “Corrective Lenses: Challenging representations of women of color in art”. The exhibition called for women of color artists to :

“produce a subversive reproduction of a canonic work of art in which you feel women of colour have been unfairly represented.” 

The work of French artist Jean-Leon Gerome always stood out to me during my research on Orientalism. “The Slave Market” (1867) was to me, a powerful depiction of a European gaze upon the Orient, showing the sale of a (white) woman in an Arab slave market.

Arab merchants did indeed play a big role in the slave trade, but the choice of representing Arab slave-merchants/buyers rather than European is a reflection of the Orientalist discourse which Edward Said writes of, in which “European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.” In other words, the artist has the conscious knowledge of his own people participating in the enslavement of humans, yet chooses to represent the “other” doing these same actions in order to elevate his own culture in contrast.

However, I wanted to do more than just point fingers at the West in how it has misrepresented the Arab region over the centuries. It was important for me to look within and cast a critical perspective over both our history and our current crisis in the region. 

Historically, the Arab World had participated in the trading of slaves long before the Europeans caught on to the economic prospects of the Slave Trade. In fact, the Arab World even bought white slaves, Slavs, from East European countries, who were sold by Italian traders at Middle Eastern slave markets as early as the ninth century. When the Europeans entered into the Atlantic Slave Trade in sizable numbers, the Arabs had been partaking in the trans-Saharan slave trade at even higher proportions during the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. This popular knowledge probably informed Jean Leon Gerome’s content for the “Slave Market”, alongside his voyages to both Turkey and Egypt during the 1850’s.

To contextualize the painting in today’s world, I was immediately drawn to the social issue of modern-day slavery. With the war in Iraq raging on and the exodus of refugees in neighboring countries at a high, I had recently come across a short news report about the forced prostitution of Iraqi refugee girls as young as 9 years old in Syria. At the time, Syria had the highest number of Iraqi refugees, numbering about 1.5 million in 2007. There were no other news articles about what I felt was a serious humanitarian crisis, with the victims being young girls sold either through false marriages or to organized prostitution rings through a middle man (or woman, in some cases). Even till today, official reports by the Iraqi government refuses to acknowledge the crisis of underage refugee exploitation. In my research, I came across dozens of video’s filmed using celphones by “sex-tourists”. They recorded their trysts with these young Iraqi girls, in dingy hotel rooms and seedy clubs in Damascus and other non-descript cities in the Arab world, and uploaded them on YouTube. This modern-day slavery was a real crisis, with real victims, and the lack of official information about it made me feel it was my duty to shed some light upon it through my artwork. That is how “Inanna in Damascus” was born. 

Inanna, the focal point of the painting, is more than a symbol of the young victims being prostituted in Damascus and elsewhere; she is a symbol for Iraq, the motherland. She wears the mask of the ancient looted “Mask of Warka”, believed to depict the Goddess Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of war and fertility. The girl in the painting is a symbol of our rich history, looted and broken, naked and vulnerable. 

Each character in the painting is a reference to the deep issues behind the crisis that Iraq faced, as a country. First, the American soldier, on the far left, whose war in Iraq is a direct cause of the displacement of millions of Iraqi’s. On the far right, the Arab “pimp”, whose monetary gain is through the exploitation of the weak, which I likened to the neighboring Arab countries who stood idly by while Iraq was pillaged by the Coalition forces, all the while housing the military bases and opening their borders for the invasion. The role of the Gulf character, the client, is similar to the pimp, yet more powerful, protected and therefore irreproachable, who reaps the benefits of the exploitation and weakness of his subject. 

The painting was exhibited on International Womens Day in March 2008 at the University of Ottawa. It was well received and no one was offended.

CHAPTER 3: THE MEDIA 

After a couple of articles about the painting were posted on small news websites, I got a phone call from a journalist from alArabiya.net. He said he would like to interview me about the painting “Inanna in Damascus”. I didn’t hesitate… I thought, any press is good press, and since no one is really covering this topic, it’s a good place to start to bring about some awareness to the issue. 

I asked the journalist to email me his questions, to make sure that I covered all my bases. I carefully noted all the things it was important to mention about the painting, especially in the context of the Arab media; that the painting is based on a painting by a French Orientalist artist from the 19th century called “The Slave Market”, how the prostitution that I am talking about is forced upon these young girls, and how Inanna is most importantly a symbol for Iraq, a victim of exploitation.

However, the journalist had something else in mind. (Click for article)

He omitted major points I had emphasized. He framed me as a “Canadian artist” who is painting “naked Iraqi women as prostitutes” and exhibiting the work in America. 

He wrote an opinion piece that misrepresented me as an artist, misinterpreted the painting, censored the image of the painting, and gave the readers a green light to attack me from all sides.

Within 24 hours, there were already over 380 comments about the article. The article was reposted on numerous blogs and more comments rolled in. Alot of them sounded like this:

Actually i hope you are not depending on painting to make living because your paints is so bad make me want to throw up!

and i think u project on this paint show Iraqi women as whore

i think you your self is whore! and want to makes all Iraqi women like you! or at least that what u think!!!!!!

get Psychological help!

and say thank you to the night club you use to sell your body in UAE!

Bitch

but you just painted your self in you good days as whore in UAE

do not you! what makes me happy is IRAQ is clean from whores like you know fortunately!

And others… more vile, more judgemental, more slanderous. 

Luckily, there were some comments that were supportive… but the vast majority were quite harsh. 

I was labeled as anti-Islamic, anti-Arab, destroying the reputation of Iraqi women, a bad painter, an apologist for the West, an apologist for Saddam, an opportunist, looking for controversy, and every bad word for “prostitute” under the sun.

I am grateful to have a supportive family, because without the encouragement and support of my mother, father, sister and husband, such an experience would have destroyed my confidence and strength. I was able to move forward, albeit with a slightly bruised ego, but with the lesson to never trust a journalist to represent my ideas, especially on such a sensitive topic. 

CHAPTER 4: THE INSTITUTION 

Three years went by, and in that time, I was awarded a grant to produce my largest body of work, WARCHESTRA, about war and culture. By replacing weapons of war with musical instruments, the WARCHESTRA experience aims to re-imagine the media-saturated spaces of the Middle East, and Iraq in particular, through collage and sound. I had moved on with my work and was taking it to different places, always with the issues of misrepresentation of Arabs in the media, and deeper social issues of Iraq in mind. 

While “Inanna in Damascus” was shelved in my studio collecting dust, I received an email from a curator at the Insitut du Monde Arab in Paris, France, about including the painting in their upcoming exhibition “Le Corps Decouvert”, an exhibition focusing on the nude body in Arab art. I accepted the offer, feeling as this exhibit would be the right context for the work to be understood and appreciated. I insisted that they include the text about the painting in my own words, and signed a contract to loan the work to the Institut du Monde Arabe for the period of the exhibition. 

Throughout the course of the exhibition, which was up for 6 months, friends who visited the exhibit would write me and tell me that they couldn’t find my work. In the last weeks of the exhibition, I wrote to the curator, curious to know why my friends couldn’t see the work. Here is the response that I got:

“Management has expressed serious reservations about the political contents of the painting which may not conform to their neutrality policy. This is why we regrettably had to remove your work from the exhibition and keep it in the storage.  

Maybe I should have informed you that your work is not anymore exhibited, but I didn't want to upset you.”  

When I stressed for more details on their “neutrality policy”, she responded:

“…when we received the painting and unpacked it, we could see then the details and the word (ﺔﻳﺩﻮﻌﺴﻟﺍ) written on the immatriculation number of the car. This detail is stigmatizing a specific country: Saudi Arabia. And the Institut du monde arabe being a cultural institution representing all Arab countries, we are in the obligation of not taking sides.” 

The work was censored. The Institut du Monde Arabe is funded by 18 Arab States, and one of their largest funders is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Had I not emailed them to ask about the work, I would have never even known that the work was removed. I responded and told her that:

“The IMA have actively censored an artist's voice and freedom of expression. For a reputable cultural institution as the IMA claims to be, this is an undemocratic and repressive act. When a cultural institution cannot uphold the rights and freedom of intellectual artistic expression of the artists they select to exhibit, it is inexcusable. To keep me in the dark about my work not being on display is unprofessional. Despite being included in articles or the catalogue, you denied thousands of visitors from coming into contact with my work.”

An article written by my friend Megan Beneat Donald was published on her blog, titled “The True Art of Censorship”, which was the only press that I agreed to do about the matter (it has since been taken down.). I made arrangements with the Institut du Monde Arabe to ship the painting back to me to Dubai, where I was living at the time.

The next email I got was this:

“Dear Mrs. Abdul Hadi,

I'm sorry to inform you that the painting was blocked by customs upon arrival in Dubai and is not allowed to enter the Emirates due to the nude character showed on the picture.

The painting is currently stored in security at Dubai airport.”

The Institut du Monde Arabe boxed up the painting and sent it to Dubai, irresponsibly without protocol – in other words, no image was sent to the destination office of the shipper to approve its contents before shipping. The UAE’s regulations on import are extremely strict, an issue I didn’t consider in the frustration of getting my painting back after the disappointment of the censorship. The last thing I expected was for customs to open the painting and ban it for its content.

CHAPTER 5: THE CONTRABAND

The work was refused entry into the country. I asked all my friends in the art world for advice… they unanimously told me to avoid fighting to bring it into the country, and to just send it back. Even the shipper renounced their responsibility as the middle-man because they felt that the work was too “taboo” and that it was too risky for them to be associated to its arrival in the country. I thought it was enough to just tell customs “return to sender”, without getting into a debate about the content of the work. Unfortunately, since they knew I was in Dubai, the chief of security at customs insisted he “meet the artist in person” before sending the painting back to its point of origin.

Born in the UAE, but raised in Canada, I was familiar with the customs and regulations of the country. I was so anxious, and didn’t know whether I was looking at jail time, deportation, a warning or a mild slap on the wrist.

My husband and I went to customs, and the shipper agreed to take us for logistical purposes. The chief of security called me into his office, and our conversation sounded something like this:

“CUSTOMS: You made this painting?

ME: Yes, I’m the artist.

CUSTOMS: Why would you paint such an image?

ME: Oh it’s a reproduction of an old French painting.

CUSTOMS: Are you Muslim?

ME: Yes…

CUSTOMS: Why would you put this scene and paint a mosque in the background?

ME: …

CUSTOMS: Were you planning on exhibiting this painting in the UAE?

ME: Not at all, its just for me. It was probably going to be put in a closet somewhere.

CUSTOMS: Ok listen, I’m having a good day. I’m going to let you off easy… but you know, this could have been much more serious for you.

ME: Thank you sir, I really appreciate that.”

He then asked me to write and sign a document stating that I will never attempt to bring in this work, or any work like it, into the UAE again. He took scans of all my identification, and recorded all my details. We then signed off the painting to be returned to Canada. 

CHAPTER 6: THE RETURN

Six months later we made the decision to move back to Montreal. 

I can’t say that what happened with “Inanna in Damascus” wasn’t a catalyst for our decision to leave Dubai. Granted, not all my paintings are similar to “Inanna in Damascus”, in fact, none of them are. But I didn’t want to have to think twice about my creative process. To question whether I was going to produce something that would be subject to legal limitations, especially with something as subjective as art. Social issues are what move me and inspire me to speak out, and I couldn’t do that freely without wondering if I was going to be offending the wrong person. 

Art is subjective. My painting “Inanna in Damascus” was misinterpreted countless times… but that is part of art. I can’t define how a viewer interprets the work. I can only guide them in the best of my ability. However, I have learnt that it doesn’t matter what you show, if the person isn’t ready to see it, they’ll only see the parts they want to see. In the case of “Inanna in Damascus”, sometimes it was her nudity that shocked the viewer, although I didn’t paint her body in a sensual or sexual way. Other times, it was a tiny detail that offended the viewer… whether it was the mosque in the background, or the tiny license plate that read “Saudi Arabia” – not the number 1.5 million, for the number of Iraqi refugees in Syria. The big picture is rarely seen. The victim remains invisible. Today, the crisis is still escalating dramatically, with more instability and violence in the region seeing higher numbers of girls being exploited and rights taken away… 

_________________

The journey that “Inanna in Damascus” took me through has taught me about the freedom of expression and how that is a privilege that should not be taken lightly.

It taught me to challenge the status quo or else we will never see change or dialogue. 

It taught me about maintaining integrity in the face of harsh criticism and slander. 

It taught me about censorship and the internal politics of major art institutions.

The irony of the painting’s journey is that it reflects the same struggle that the millions of displaced Iraqis, and Syrians, and Palestinians, face on a regular basis. Turned back at borders, denied their rights, marginalized, and misrepresented.