The 2023 exhibition Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond brought work by 42 women artists to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The exhibition challenged the assumption that women across the Middle East share one uniform experience defined only by oppression.
Images of agency and contradiction
Iranian photojournalist Newsha Tavakolian contributed a portrait of a woman wearing traditional clothing and boxing gloves.
Shirin Aliabadi depicted a younger woman whose blonde wig emerged from beneath a headscarf as she blew a bubble with chewing gum.
These images complicated expectations around tradition, rebellion and visibility. The women represented were not passive symbols of a region, but individuals negotiating fashion, social rules, humour and self-presentation.
The exhibition included artists from several countries and cultural backgrounds, allowing personal and local stories to remain distinct.
A transnational discussion about bodily autonomy
The display opened after protests in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody and during renewed conflict over abortion rights in the United States.
Curator Linda Komaroff used that context to question the comfortable distinction often made between women’s rights in the United States and elsewhere.
The exhibition did not argue that the political situations were identical. It placed them within a shared conversation about control over women’s bodies, public appearance and personal agency.
Women Defining Women shifted emphasis away from external descriptions of Middle Eastern women. Its title identified the artists themselves as the people producing definitions through image, narrative and lived experience.
The exhibition’s importance lay in its plurality. No single artwork could represent the region, and the display resisted the idea that 42 artists should be read through one cultural stereotype.