The Past Versus an Unknown Future: On Intergenerational Transmission Between Mothers and Daughters in Druze Art

Abstract

This research analyses the artwork of first-generation Druze women artists in Israel—Hiyam Mustafa (أيام مصطفى), Samira Wahbi (سميرة وهبي), Amira Ziyan (اميرة زيدان), Fatma Shanan (فاطمة شنان), and Mazda Halabi (ماجدة حلبي). All were born in the 1970s and 80s, grew up in Druze towns in the mountains of the Carmel, the Golan Heights, and the Galilee, and then attended art school in the 1990s and early 2000s. These five artists were the first of their kind to study in academic institutions with the purpose of becoming artists and engaging with the discourse of the art world. They paved the way for other women, and, with time, produced a body of works through which we can study processes of identity construction and the development of visual symbolisation in the face of multiple oppression (oppression occurring in several social categories at once, such as gender and ethnicity).

Druze female artists are a minority among female Arab artists, and through their art, they are making themselves heard, both as women in the Israeli art scene and as part of a minority in Israel. These artists engage with social and cultural conflicts while criticizing the patriarchal Arab society in which they live, and sometimes also the Jewish-Israeli majority. These critical attitudes are evident when the artists represent encounters between Western and Eastern cultures and between patriarchal and pluralist societies, as well as in the attempt to create a new language to reflect their voices both as women dealing with multiple oppression and as individuals in the art world. And yet, despite the conspicuous presence of female Druze artists in the local art scene, few articles have been written about them, and most of those are part of catalogues.

In contrast to the existing literature, which focuses on a specific artist’s exhibition or aspect (such as gender), this study argues that female Druze artists, as a minority among a minority (Arab society), constitute a unique group in the landscape of Israeli art. Although the discussed artists have different personalities, work in different mediums, and do not act as a group of artists—quite the contrary, each one works individually, expresses her struggle with multiple oppression in her own way, and has developed her own strategies—they make up an artistic school of unique narrative thought, both because of their being social and artistic pioneers, and because of the similarities between the subjects that appear in their work. Especially apparent is how they interact with the society they live in and with the traditional values which circumscribe their lives—Druze society ostensibly gives women power and rights, but in reality, it makes them subordinate to a patriarchal order.

This research makes use of a broad theoretical base, which, in addition to the history of art and gender studies, also includes the theory of multiple oppression and intersectionality which looks at the way that systems of domination and oppression combine. Furthermore, two concepts are borrowed from psychology research—individuation (the process of self-fulfilment while becoming a distinct individual), and visual symbolism (the way personal and cultural aspects are manifest through symbols in artistic representation).

This study asks two main questions: (a) what are the unique characteristics of the artworks, and how is the experience of multiple oppression represented in them? And, (b) how does the choice of becoming an artist and the process of making art support the women’s process of individuation as they live between two cultures—Druze and Western—and how are they expressed in their art?

The study focuses on artwork made between the beginning of the twenty-first century and 2018 (when the research proposal was submitted). It includes interviews with the artists, as well as what was written about them in exhibition catalogues. Much of the analysis draws its inspiration from Ebtesam Barakat’s work examining Druze women’s coping strategies against multiple power hierarchies. Barakat’s work enables the dismantling of intersections of the axes of power to uncover women’s categories of identity. According to this approach, women’s social and religious practices construct their identity, while reproducing or challenging the social structure. These practices reveal the many intersections of identity categories and the changes occurring in the intersections, since identities are dynamic rather than essentialist.

This research uses two points of view: a wide perspective, reflected in the cross-sectional analysis of the five women artists while examining similar social aspects in their work (article A), and a narrower point of view, which offers a close and deep analysis of two artists’ individuation process—photographer Amira Ziyan (article B) and painter Fatma Shanan (article C).

Article A—‘The Past Versus an Unknown Future: On Intergenerational Transmission Between Mothers and Daughters in Druze Art’—describes aspects of the personal and social journeys of the five artists who all studied art for personal reasons, and created art about subjects close to their hearts, and through their art redefined, both for themselves and for society, Druze women’s boundaries, whether spatial or developmental. The article examines how the artists represent the transmission of gender roles through different generations, and their resistance strategies. Mother images are shown to represent societal expectations, while daughter images represent the desire for change. The analysis shows that the women exist on a spectrum between mothers and daughters, and through her art, each artist defines her own symbolic boundaries. This process is both personal and cultural.

Analysis of the mother images reveals the artists’ double look: on the one hand there is traditional dress, reduction of available space, absence of a direct gaze, etc—all of which portray criticism of the patriarchy and its expectations of the artists themselves. On the other hand, the mothers are depicted using warm colours, in nurturing contexts which are reminiscent of later feminist thought which focused on mothers’ caretaking roles. Daughters and nieces, however, are shown on a continuum of choice between continuing tradition and opening up space for themselves and their own daughters. The images reveal the young generation’s variety of options: on the one end is the option of continuing the tradition, as shown in Wahabi’s photography, and on the other end the option of choosing the more individual options of education, Western clothes, and exiting the Druze town—all ongoing processes in Druze society over the last couple of decades, especially in relation to education and work. However, even in these artworks, the conflict and complexity of a society living on such a spectrum are discernible. The answers to the question of how far you can get from home, for example, are not unanimous. Engagement with this question is artistically represented through such aspects as symbols, gazes, and technique.

Article B—‘Amira Ziyan - “Art Has Strengthened My Voice and That of All Women”: From Self-Discovery to Agent of Change’—puts at its centre Ziyan’s work and process of individuation, in three stages. In the first she was coping with society’s expectations of her, especially in the context of starting a family, by creating staged portraits. During the second stage she mourned her father and the recognition as an artist that she will never get from him—this she represented through a series of photographs on an exposed concrete beam. The third stage was that of her turning into an agent of social change who makes the voices of other women heard through a series of photographs in which women’s bodies are exposed with control. Through this process, I argue, Ziyan completed her gradual transformation into an individual creator and social activist who gives women a voice through her artwork and redefines the ‘Druze woman’ with her female gaze, as she had dreamed of doing ever since beginning her art studies at the University of Haifa. This transformation did not occur in a vacuum. As Barakat has noted, Druze women have been trying to widen their options and to fulfil their wishes without leaving their communities and culture. Such a change requires a subversive personal-political power rising from within, which creates cracks in the social order.

Article C—‘The Search for Individual Voice: - Fatma Shanan: The Development of a Druze Artist’—analyses Fatma Shanan’s process of individuation. Unlike Ziyan, who has chosen to be a Druze woman first of all and only after that an artist, and to change society from within, Shanan, it transpires, chose a different strategy. Her process is also divided into three stages and represented through four self-portraits (which largely predict the issues that occupy her to this day): ‘Self Portrait’, a realistic painting of herself as a Druze woman; a deconstructed portrait expressing her criticism of both cultures and her inability to bridge between them; and two self-portraits of herself emerging from a traditional rug—indicating a self-reorganization of both cultures, out of which she rises as an individual artist, albeit partly concealed.

This analysis also defined the differences between the two artists’ individuation processes. Unlike Ziyan, who chose to change society from within, Shanan chose the identity of a ground-breaking international artist who escapes her society’s boundaries, works in Berlin and lives in Europe. Furthermore, the analysis shows how both women dismantle the realistic image to create a new image, which will symbolically express their search for their own voice, with motifs such as youth and growth. Ziyan’s images are from her garden, and Shanan’s from an open field, another difference which can be attributed to Ziyan’s decision to grow as an artist within her society and Shana’s choice to grow far away from it.

The artists’ existence in the in-between—between their mothers’ and their daughters’ generations, and between traditional patriarchal society and the discourse of Western art—can be seen in their work. On the one hand, traditional images of mothers, the domestic sphere, and traditional cultural elements testify to the world they came from and in which they live; on the other hand, however, the methods they use show an internalization of the language of Western art and its critical, deconstructing, attitude. Through this juxtaposition, the artworks are a tangible expression of the encounter between the two cultures, which creates—within the art world—a synthesis of the world the artists came from and the education they acquired. Furthermore, even their criticism of patriarchal society and women’s place in it is expressed using methods taken from Western art discourse, especially their artistic techniques, such as blurring the painting’s borders and disassembling its frame, and using expressive brush strokes and blurring the boundaries between image and background. The analysis shows that through art, the artists could express their complex views, as art can maintain conflict and complexity at the same time.

Although Druze women artists, like the new generation of Palestinian women artists, are dealing with multiple oppression both as women and as a minority in a Jewish state, the formers’ coping strategies are more understated. Palestinian women artists deal more explicitly with their own bodies and with issues of violence and contempt towards women. Druze women’s images, meanwhile, are gentler, not as blunt, and their criticism is subtler.

The artwork of these five women broadens the multi-cultural feminist discourse on art to include women from a non-Western-liberal background, who create their art in the context of a dialogue between the two cultures they live in. This research also expands how we view art discourse in regard to these women by arguing, for example, that the concealment of body parts is not—as the liberal argument goes—an expression of oppression, but rather a means of resistance since it is a traditional perception that the ability to control what the other can see is a form of female resistance, similar to choosing silence. This aspect emphasizes the contribution of research into Druze women artists to the discourse of art in general, and in particular to broadening our understanding of what the resistance of women who do not live in a liberal society looks like.

The showcasing of female family members in the artworks suggests the cooperation of other women in the artistic work. It also shows that circles of social change have coalesced around the artists. These circles contribute to the expansion of social boundaries and of social discourse by adding more women’s voices to art. The artists’ activities in different spheres and spaces create a cumulative effect that advances social change. Part of this change is deliberate. Three of the artists—Ziyan, Mustafa, and Halabi—founded art programs in their towns’ schools in order to expose the students, and their parents as well, to the world of art and to free and critical thought.

Inspired by the writing of Saba Mahmoud, who described how religious women pursue self-fulfilment in the religious sphere, and in the context of Barakat’s research regarding professional Druze women, this study explores the complex interactions of Druze women artists with the modern world. All of them—apart from one, Shanan, who left Druze society (although her work deals with her social and cultural inheritance)—produce their work within their society while balancing religious and modern practices. Sigal Barkai has shown that female artists in traditional societies walk along the boundaries of their strict religious community, sometimes re-affirming them, and sometimes pushing them aside to widen them. This research shows how Druze women artists choose strategies of coping and resistance which do not dismantle the social order (three of them even have their own families), but, in Barakat’s terms, create ‘pores’ in the structure—each pore standing on its own. This image emphasizes that Druze women’s resistance does not create cracks which travel across intersections of oppression, but rather pockets of resistance which pierce and change the rigid and traditional structure from the inside. Although there is seemingly no change on the social level, women’s resistance activities create a dynamic that constitutes a nucleus of social change—small blossoms of broadening social and gender boundaries. In the same vein, we may see in the actions of Druze women artists within the community a further expression of this process of change, this time coming from the direction of art. These actions are, in fact, subversive activities—a strategy for change, the core of which is the redefinition of existing norms. The action originates from the margins and is directed at the centre by challenging the normative discourse, creating new avenues of expression for women and status for them as subjects.