East Hills Girls Technology High School
Miss Orient
Photomedia, photography and photoshop
Miss Orient confronts art history's exoticisation and disoriented view of the Middle East and gender stereotypes contained in vintage photography of French-colonial Egypt. Inspired by Cindy Sherman's constructed identities through masquerade and Contemporary Arab photographic artists, I have curated my own photographic history with mimicked hand-colourisation of photographs, using over one hundred layers on Photoshop. Contained within each photograph are five Egyptian females, including myself, of different age groups and social class.
Colouring these photographs simultaneously rescue these women from silent, immobile narratives of domestication and objectification but also point to the anachronistic obscurity of these images containing uncomfortably paired objects, and uncompromising gazes blurring the line between assumption and narrative. Through using nostalgic photographic language of colourisation and recontextualization, these women untangle complex social narratives. These women reorient and reclaim the gaze of Egyptian women and culture.
 |  | ARTEXPRESS is a joint partnership between The New South Wales Department of Education and NSW Education Standards Authority in association with Hazelhurst Arts Centre. |
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