Zoulikha Bouabdellah's installation work "Silence Noir", 2016 is featured in the exhibition "Women Defining Women" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art- LACMA, which runs from April 23-September 24, 2023.
In Islam, worshippers customarily remove their footwear to pray, but in Silence Noir,
Zoulikha Bouabdellah places nine pairs of stiletto-heeled shoes on a prayer mat where people would typically stand barefoot. Playing with the ideas of presence and absence, visibility and erasure, and tradition and Western ideas of modernity, Bouabdellah cut a circular opening beneath each pair of stilettos to highlight the possibility of a world beyond dichotomies. to France in 1993, Bouabdellah grew up surrounded by art as the daughter of Hassen Bouabdellah, a film director and author, and Malika Dorbani, former head of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers. She currently lives and works in Paris and Casablanca.
This exhibition presents 75 works by 42 women artists who were born or live in what can broadly be termed Islamic societies. Frequently perceived as voiceless and invisible, they are neither. Each through her unique vision is fashioning not only her own definition of self but also helping to redefine and empower women everywhere and to challenge still-persistent stereotypes. Their art depicts a breadth of inventively and often ideologically conceived women's imagery, bearing witness to rapidly shifting political developments and often accelerated social transformations taking place in lands extending from Africa to Western and Central Asia, as well as in diasporic communities. Their powerful narratives are embedded in their art, expressing both personal and universal concerns. Across generations and working in different media, the artists share a common sense of identity not exclusively "Middle Eastern" but certainly female, which is evident in their work.
