Maiada Aboud Live Performance political art

Live Performance Sitting in My University Locker Waxing 

Duration: 90 minutes

About Maiada Aboud

PhD student at Sheffield Hallam University, UK 

MA – Coventry school of art and design, UK

In Maiada's words:  As a woman in a patriarchal society, as an Arab citizen in a Jewish country ….in my videos there are always some forms of resistance to the sexual and social roles played by me as a woman, the roles that I have had to follow through all of my life as a way of transcending the “unkindness” of the real circumstances. Many reasons brought me to deal with the issues of gender and sexuality especially within the female body, viewed as a taboo in the Arab world, so that I could accomplish the things that are forbidden in my family, society, and religion. I have used my body as an actual material to reflect the social and the emotional conflict, trying to break down barriers between art and life. I have tried to create self portraits by breaking and representing my identity in order to make the viewer aware of the structure of seeing and exploring my experience in life, giving him a chance to have a look at my personal world and my own nature.

In Maiada's words:   By using video performances, I can say what cannot be said/ done, and I can demonstrate against the system. I can represent the body, its weakness, and the body from inside, whether it is “at risk” “opened up” or in pain. That all together is culturally and politically loaded. Elements of endurance and pain are brought to life because of the fact that they are considered as a taboo in the Arab culture, and they are new to the Arab world since we are used to endure on a daily base within the political and social restrictions. While pain cannot be shared, it can affect and can be projected onto others in a way that they can become the site of suffering, while I can be healed. My work in general emphasis on the body in pain, it is considered as endurance art, and it highlights the suffering of the female’s body, (trapped, dislocated, in exile and represented as extremely enduring). All together trying to command the viewer to listen and question the relation between pain and pleasure, and to make him think of the different connotations for men and women, and differences in the way that the male and the female body are perceived.

web site:  http://www.maiada-aboud.com/