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8/3/2019 Princess Hijab Editorial
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I make pictures and someone comes inand calls it art
Willem de KooningLet me begin this post by explaining that my religious views are most adequately summarized by the
secular prophet, Chuck Klosterman. I espouse a partial belief in everything; Im prone to believe that
just about any religious ideology is potentially accurate, regardless of how ridiculous it might seem (or
be). Consequently, this post is not about religious dogma; it is not about the Quran, the Hadith, the
Old Testament, or The Letter Killeth of Jim Jones. However, like these texts, I do wish to examine
the dichotomy of creation and destruction, coverage and exposure, art and science.
With that grandiose opening, let me introduce the primary antagonist of this post: Princess
Hijab.Princess Hijabis an anonymous Paris-based guerilla (graffitti?) artist who uses a jumbo marker
pen or dripping black paint to hijab-ize billboards featuring scantily clad or provocatively poised
models. She began her niqab intervention campaign in 2006, almost two years after the French
Senate approved a law banning Muslim head scarvesand other ostensible religious apparel (e.g.
large Christian crosses, Jewish skullcaps, and Sikh turbans). More recently, in September 2010, theFrench Senate passed a bill banning the niquab and the burqa (face covering veils). In light of these
events, some have interpreted Princess Hijabs art as a conservative religious reaction to the burqa
ban and to the depraved exhibition of nakedness and sexuality. Others regard her as an
feminist provocateur, crusading against the exploitation of women and agitating them to take
ownership of their bodies.
http://books.google.com/books?id=8bvFIHE0u4kC&pg=PA228&lpg=PA228&dq=chuck+klosterman+religion+partial+belief&source=bl&ots=KOr_c9Xl0K&sig=yfvgJk8THKfGCi_tOp25ogNOhNg&hl=en&ei=iFVSTpGdMcPdgQfo_d35Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=8bvFIHE0u4kC&pg=PA228&lpg=PA228&dq=chuck+klosterman+religion+partial+belief&source=bl&ots=KOr_c9Xl0K&sig=yfvgJk8THKfGCi_tOp25ogNOhNg&hl=en&ei=iFVSTpGdMcPdgQfo_d35Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=8bvFIHE0u4kC&pg=PA228&lpg=PA228&dq=chuck+klosterman+religion+partial+belief&source=bl&ots=KOr_c9Xl0K&sig=yfvgJk8THKfGCi_tOp25ogNOhNg&hl=en&ei=iFVSTpGdMcPdgQfo_d35Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttp://twitter.com/princesshijab_http://twitter.com/princesshijab_http://twitter.com/princesshijab_http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A28555-2004Mar3¬Found=truehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A28555-2004Mar3¬Found=truehttp://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/dolche_4_p.jpghttp://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/3825135526_185c6363f7.jpghttp://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/traditional_air.jpghttp://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/dolche_4_p.jpghttp://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/3825135526_185c6363f7.jpghttp://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/traditional_air.jpghttp://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/dolche_4_p.jpghttp://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/3825135526_185c6363f7.jpghttp://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/traditional_air.jpghttp://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A28555-2004Mar3¬Found=truehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A28555-2004Mar3¬Found=truehttp://twitter.com/princesshijab_http://books.google.com/books?id=8bvFIHE0u4kC&pg=PA228&lpg=PA228&dq=chuck+klosterman+religion+partial+belief&source=bl&ots=KOr_c9Xl0K&sig=yfvgJk8THKfGCi_tOp25ogNOhNg&hl=en&ei=iFVSTpGdMcPdgQfo_d35Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false8/3/2019 Princess Hijab Editorial
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However, Princess Hijab maintains that she is not defending or championing the cause of any group.
The Princess has told reporters that she began her experimentation with veils while making spandex
outfits that enveloped bodies more art than fashion, she says. To (try to) understand her
intentions, one must consider her artistic background and examine the roots of graffiti in abstract
expressionism.
The artist Susan Stewart described graffiti as the romantic heir to abstraction expressionism.
Abstract Expressionism is an avante-garde artistic movement that flourished in New York in the
1940s. Its roster included artists who repudiated accepted conventions in techniques and subject
matter The New York School sought to communicate important truths of human experience and
psyche through simple, abstract forms or symbols rather than purely literal depictions. They asserted
that the symbols they painted had no explicit meaning but derived from the artists unconscious.
Nonetheless, these symbols were communicative because they could speak to the same faculty in the
viewer.
Art criticspurport that specific patterns of recognition that enable
perception and cognition underlie the variety of compositional formats used by
the Abstract Expressionists. Because of our physical experience of existing and acting in a universe
(e.g. perceiving the environment, moving our bodies, and exerting and experiencing force), we form
fundamental conceptual structures which we use to organize thought across a range of more abstract
http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/finearts/faculty/arthistory/cernuschi.htmlhttp://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/finearts/faculty/arthistory/cernuschi.htmlhttp://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=Abstract%20Expressionism&page=4&f=Movement&cr=30http://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/bristol-street-art.jpghttp://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=Abstract%20Expressionism&page=4&f=Movement&cr=30http://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/bristol-street-art.jpghttp://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/finearts/faculty/arthistory/cernuschi.html8/3/2019 Princess Hijab Editorial
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domains. For example, the containment schema structures our experience of putting objects into and
taking them out of a bounded area. These patterns are metaphorically extended to structure
nonphysical, nonvisual experiences. For example, we get lost in a book, we fall in love, we
leave outsome details.
Additionally, abstract expressionism is often characterized
by the manner in which the pictorial space is created. Abstract expressionists emphasized the open,
more immediate surface and used paint in a manner that allowed the surface to breathe. They did not
attempt to disguise the canvas as an easel painting by using insulating finishes. Instead, they used
enamel paint to reflect light across the surface of the canvas or soaked thinned paint into the
unprimed canvas. Elmer Bischoff explained these practices by describing the canvas as the area of
search. Whereas artists who used representational forms considered the canvas as an illusionist
window onto the world, the abstract expressionists handled it as an autonomous, self-referentialobject.
Like abstract expressionism, the visual vocabulary ofgraffiti art does not include objects or events but rather forms and features that .communicate by
evoking physical associations. In fact, graffiti artists have clarified the tradition of using words in
graffiti by stating that that they interpret the alphabet as a set of letters which provide abstract
structures like musical notes. They seek to obliterate the meaning of the word, using it as a reference
point from which they can begin to improvise.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/65.247http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80116http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/65.247http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=801168/3/2019 Princess Hijab Editorial
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You may wonder why I have been rambling about abstract and nonrepresentational art. You may point
out the Princess Hijab reproduces one object, the hijab an explicit subject matter. However, I would
contend that Princess Hijab is not rendering the hijab as an object, but rather as an abstract symbol
that can stimulate certain reactions in a more powerful way than conventional modes of expression.
Princess Hijab uses the hijab to compel viewers to consider the act and experience of covering.
Warningsh&ts about to get dense
In his book,Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things,George Lakoff argued that individuals automatically
categorize people, animals, and physical objects. He purported that we structure our knowledge of the
world in terms of idealized cognitive models (ICMs), which include image schemas. Image schemas
emerge as meaninful structures for us chiefly at the level of our bodily movements through space,
our manipulation of objects, and our perceptual interactions. Reasoning patterns based on image
schemata (imagistic reasoning patterns) are mapped onto reasoning patterns based on abstract
reasoning (abstract reasoning patterns) via conceptual metaphors. Burgman and Lakoff describe
three variations of the over schema that can indicate a spatial relationship between a trajector
(figure) and landmark (ground). These include the above-across schema, the above schema, and the
cover schema. When the cover schema is salient, the trajector is an object whose two-dimensional
extent covers the landmark (extends to the edges or beyond the landmark). Usually, the trajector is
http://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/banksy-graffiti-graffiti-removal.jpghttp://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/staff/paper/mmchiu/doc/Lakoff%20--%20Women,%20Fire,%20and%20Dangerous%20Things.pdfhttp://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/staff/paper/mmchiu/doc/Lakoff%20--%20Women,%20Fire,%20and%20Dangerous%20Things.pdfhttp://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/staff/paper/mmchiu/doc/Lakoff%20--%20Women,%20Fire,%20and%20Dangerous%20Things.pdfhttp://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/staff/paper/mmchiu/doc/Lakoff%20--%20Women,%20Fire,%20and%20Dangerous%20Things.pdfhttp://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/princess-hijab-inde_614825t.jpghttp://www.pesekgraffiti.com/top-graffiti-alphabets-letters-collections/olympus-digital-camera-2http://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/princess-hijab-inde_614825t.jpghttp://www.pesekgraffiti.com/top-graffiti-alphabets-letters-collections/olympus-digital-camera-2http://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/staff/paper/mmchiu/doc/Lakoff%20--%20Women,%20Fire,%20and%20Dangerous%20Things.pdfhttp://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/banksy-graffiti-graffiti-removal.jpg8/3/2019 Princess Hijab Editorial
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construed as being vertically above, and in contact with, the landmark (e.g. the table cloth is over
the table).
Like the abstract expressionists, graffiti artists rely on the
cognitive schema, such as the over schema to communicate with their audience. When the viewer
perceives graffiti, the over schema is activated. The viewer conceives the graffiti as the trajector and
the public surface as the landmark. The viewer will understand that the grafitti is covering the wall.
Based on his/her knowledge and experience, he may interpret the graffiti as beautiful art hiding the
austerity of the urban environment or as ugly vandalism defacing the loveliness of the urban
environment. Cognitive schema structure our thinking, but do not define our thoughts. Abstract
reasoning depends on an individuals knowledge base.
Princess Hijabs oeuvre also activates the over
schema; however, in a more complex manner. The viewer perceives the graffiti as a trajector and the
billboard as the landmark; however he/she also perceives the hijab as the trajector and the body
(more specifically, the flesh) as the landmark. Once the over schema is activated and the viewer
begins to engage in abstract reasoning, he/she may wonder if it is the graffiti which covers the flesh
or the hijab which covers the billboard. It is the complex reaction that PHs art incites which makes it
so powerful and ultimately makes HER so powerful. By manipulating our perception, she can
manipulate our cognition. We are forced to acknowledge that the advertisement is not the models it
represents nor is PHs sketch/paint the hijab it represents. Reality becomes illusory.
http://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/corner-graffiti-wall-paint.jpghttp://books.google.com/books?id=KbqxnX3_uc0C&pg=PA391&lpg=PA391&dq=lakoff+descartes&source=bl&ots=lfIcffbtmf&sig=2D43DvH7be_HSBXPbKrOtFztAAI&hl=en&ei=_GlcTsmFEsLZgQfDlYGAAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAAhttp://starckmarcandthefarc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/corner-graffiti-wall-paint.jpghttp://books.google.com/books?id=KbqxnX3_uc0C&pg=PA391&lpg=PA391&dq=lakoff+descartes&source=bl&ots=lfIcffbtmf&sig=2D43DvH7be_HSBXPbKrOtFztAAI&hl=en&ei=_GlcTsmFEsLZgQfDlYGAAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAA8/3/2019 Princess Hijab Editorial
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So with that, I leave you with one more question to stir some more abstract thought. If I am
covering Princess Hijabs story in this blog post, have I affected your reasoning?
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