Women's Art from the Islamic World

clipped from www.startribune.com Women from Islamic countries shred others' veils of ignorance about their culture in a St. Catherine University exhibit. For decades, the primary image that Americans have been offered of women in Islamic countries is of veiled figures striding through open-air markets, waiting in doorways or peering warily through slits in their head coverings. Their lives have remained mostly blank slates suggesting nothing of their education, aspirations, home life, travels, political sentiments or religious views. Such stereotypes were particularly grating to the cosmopolitan women of the Middle East who found their own identities obscured by misconceptions and ignorance. To set the record straight, a Jordanian princess, Wijdan Ali, and an artist friend, Aliki Moschis-Gauguet, organized a show of more than 50 paintings, drawings and works on paper by women from predominantly Islamic countries.