Art in Arabia

I was walking through the Emirates Palace when I came a across a doorway that, much to my surprise, had an extensive collection of contemporary art. (These little surprises are what makes the Palace interesting. Another out of the way cove had a significant collection of original Henri Cartier-Bresson prints, but that is another story.) One of the pieces at this exhibit was a video-installation of a performance artist. It was a woman wearing a black body suit that covered her completely, including her face (sort of like Spider Man) and had green numbers on it like a digital ticker tape. She was doing mundane tasks like going to the ATM, selecting produce etc. The kind of art that you forget about quickly.

However, the only other inhabitants of this gallery was a group of young women (maybe 12 to 15 years old) fully dressed in the abayas and veils who were apparently on a school field trip. They came to the screen, 2 or 3 at a time and did some serious giggling. This was the kind of giggling that you would expect from young Americans seeing Michaelangelo's David or maybe a Charles Prince piece. Every now and then, 1 of the girls would leave the group and bring someone else back, who would instantly start giggling with the others. As each scene changed, for example, when the ticker-tape Spiderwoman got on an escalator, the teetering would get all the stronger.

I am tempted to put all sorts of cultural and feminist hermeneutics into this paragraph, but instead I'll just say that it was a neat image.