Date of Award
2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Contemporary Art
Abstract
This essay examines how contemporary artists from the Middle East challenge Eurocentric frameworks of representation embedded in Orientalism by proposing alternative narratives of identity, history, and resistance. This study, which draws on postcolonial theory, particularly Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), Dipesh Chakrabarty's Provincialising Europe (2000), and Hamid Dabashi's Post-Orientalism (2009), explores how artistic practices dismantle the inherited hierarchies of Orientalist knowledge and visual power. Orientalism, which generated a discourse that constructs the Orient as Europe's ‘Other,’ still fuels neo-Orientalist narratives that portray the Middle East as irrational, violent, or static. Through a close analysis of the artistic practices of artists Shirin Neshat, Abdulnasser Gharem and Mona Hatoum, this thesis traces how contemporary artists from the Middle East are reclaiming their power of representation and transforming symbols traditionally constrained by colonial discourse.
The series Women of Allah (1993–1997) by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat redefines the veil as a symbol of autonomy and personal expression, subverting the colonial male gaze through the interaction of calligraphy, weaponry and the gaze. The sculptural works Capital Dome (2012) and Hemisphere (2017) by Saudi artist Abdulnasser Gharem challenge political authority by merging Islamic and Western architectural vocabularies, thereby destabilising the Eurocentric binaries between democracy and theocracy. Hatoum's works, Measures of Distance (1988) and Hot Spot (2006/13), transform exile, memory, and displacement, derived from Orientalist metaphors, into lived experiences of hybridity and resistance.
Together, these artists' practices demand the right to self-representation and rearrange inherited cultural symbols into acts of resistance. Their practices collectively expose the tenacity of Orientalist narratives in contemporary discourse while proposing alternative forms of modernity that are universal, decolonial, and negotiated on a global scale rather than limited to Eurocentric ideologies.
Recommended Citation
Wolter, Violette, "From Otherness to Agency: Reframing Eurocentric and Orientalist Representations in Contemporary Middle Eastern Art" (2026). MA in Contemporary Art Dissertations. 2.
https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/ma_con_art/2