What Will Befall Her Statement

Grievously, many millions of females born each year will experience physical and psychological violence against their persons during their lifetimes, for no other reason than their gender.

The scale of this discrimination is pandemic, affecting approximately half of the world's population. Covert forms include limitations on opportunities, unequal education, and wage discrimination. Extreme examples of gender oppression, the killing of female babies, bride burning, "honor killing', rape camps, female genital mutilation, sexual trafficking in women and children, incest and femicide are so horrific as to make them difficult to comprehend for those who have not directly experienced the crimes. The world effectively looks the other way as millions on millions of women suffer or die.

In “What Will Befall Her?”, large-scale drawings depict one or more women against a backdrop of symbols and text. The women are nude, as the intent is to show them without the "veils" of restrictions, assumptions, and cultural roles. The graphic black on white at once symbolizes the oppression, and strips the work to essential elements. Persian rugs inspire the compositional format of the work. Texts, when used in these images, are poems about women rendered in Persian calligraphy.

Violence against women is a worldwide phenomenon, not limited to country, type of government, ethnicity, race, religion or class. The unalienable human rights of women must be universally acknowledged and rigorously upheld, and until this happens, no society or culture or peoples may consider themselves moral, civilized or free.
Copyright © 2006 Fahimeh Vahdat