The most heavily politicized garment of our time is surely the Muslim hijab, veil, headscarf, chador, burqa or whatever name you’d give it. What women are supposed to wear, what they are allowed to wear and not has throughout history been an important issue, both politically and socially. In Europe and in the Middle East, the headscarf has developed into a potent symbol of the controversies between tradition and progress, secularism and religion, private and public space, feminism and Islamism, freedom and oppression (here, depending on the context, the scarf is used by both sides). The conflicts, misconceptions and misunderstandings of public debates over the issue and the need for academic investigation and visual representation led social scientist Nilüfer Göle to conceive an exhibition project that explores the significance of veiling in different contexts. Curator Emre Baykal invited ten artists, nine of them from Middle Eastern backgrounds and the result, a most surprising, thought-provoking and yes, entertaining, exhibition titled “Mahrem” was shown at the Tanas initiative in Berlin.

Ironically, we have to rely on artists from Muslim countries for critical reflections on the habit of veiling women’s bodies/hair/faces to “protect” them from the male gaze. It is very unfortunate that the current xenophobic climate in Europe forces all of us (and I include myself) who do not belong to the political extreme right to refrain from any critical investigation of veiling as a means to control and limit women’s freedom. It is as if we, despite all our intellectuality have agreed to keep quiet, for fear of being labelled as racists. This is why we need exhibitions like this and artists like these, who with their notes on veiling (“Anmerkungen zum Verschleiern”, so the subtitle of the exhibition) venture onto ground we Europeans seem to shrink back from.

“Mahrem” succeeds in pointing out some of the many different and often highly ambivalent connotations of veiling. That veiling sometimes has the opposite effect of what it proposes is nothing new. Nothing seems as enticing as what is hidden and hinted at. How luxurious fabrics – used to cover women’s bodies - can serve as an erotic promise is the subject of Iranian artist Parastoy Farocher’s photographic installation “Friday”. In many ways a simplistic work, it plays with contrasts of light skin against black fabric, of holding and letting go, of concealing and revealing, while leaving all questions open for the onlooker to answer for him/herself.

A shapeless figure, seen from a distance apparently a person completely covered by a dark veil, turns out to be a human-size shape made out entirely of hair, the very stuff that is supposed to be covered by the veil. “Chelgis I”, the title refers to an old Persian legend about a “girl with forty braids”, is the work of Iranian born artist Mandana Moghaddam, who with irony here turns the hidden outside and let what is usually concealed be the cover for a shapeless body. Contemporary obsession with self-displaying is turned ad absurdum in Syrian artist/film maker Samir Barkawi’s video, “Poster” showing three giggling girls taking pictures of each other. What makes this so banal scene absurd and utterly pointless, is that all three girls are completely covered in black veils making it impossible to distinguish one from the other.

The only way Turkish girls could cover their hair and at the same time pursue their studies was since the days of Kemal Atatürk’s ban on headscarves and veils through wearing a wig and many did so, notwithstanding the paradox of the practice (is naturally grown hair more dangerous for men than fake hair?). It is still not clear whether the lifting of the headscarves’ ban in universities in Turkey will prevail or not. Kutlug Ataman’s video installation “Women Who Wear Wigs” explores the reasons and implications of wearing wigs. Four different women, a political activist, who went under ground after the coup d’état of 1971, a TV presenter who lost her hair due to chemo therapy, a leading figure of the Turkish transvestite and transsexual scene and a headscarf-wearing student (who wished to remain anonymous and whose image is therefore not shown) talk very openly about their experiences with the wig as a means to hide their identities or an unwanted condition.

The most positive reflection on veiling was, not surprisingly in light of my comments above, from a Western artist, Bruna Esposito, who uses the motif of flowers as a metaphor for the precious, beautiful and needy of protection. Is a veil like the petals of a flower? Does a veil mean protection or exposure? Does it protect what is precious or does it leave it vulnerable and prone to offence? Her black tulips seem at first beautiful and poetic objects, only a closer look reveals the flowers to be veiled figures turned head down. Through this visual deception, Esposito wants us to reflect on our own prejudices and to look deeper, beyond the first impression.

Maybe we European cultural workers should learn something from the courage of these artists and curators and not be so afraid to engage in critical dialogues over controversial issues.

Another exhibition dealt with another burning issue of our days. The ifa-Galerie hosted a show of works by international artists exploring the politics and poetics of water. “Wasserlust und Wassernot” presented water as a myth, weapon, commodity, object of desire and play, water as a danger and water in danger - water as a human right? As a Palestinian from Gaza, Taysir Batniji is only too familiar with the highly charged politics of water. However, in this exhibition he presented a very poetic and reflective work. A video-taped performance shows him meticulously writing down 109 Arabic names for water in different conditions with a brush dipped in water. As the work progresses, the first words start to vanish stressing the volatility and preciousness of water. Another aspect of the scarcity of the “kostbare Nass” is the subject of Bright Ugochukwu Eke’s work. He problematizes the lack of clean water in Africa and the destructive effects on the environment of plastic water bottles. His installation “Shields” shows raincoats and umbrellas made out of these very same plastic bottles. The pleasure of water is the subject of Mohammed Romène’s and Erdal Buldun’s photographies. A Tunisian traditional hammam and the Turkish Mediterranean are shown as places of ritual and play, happiness and longing, water as object of veneration. Human control over nature is playfully turned upside down in Lutz and Guggisberg’s video installation “Einmal da hörte ich ihn, da wusch er die Welt” (“Once I heard Him and He Was Washing the World”). In spite of all our technology, we will never be able to control nature, who as an ever unpredictable force will always have the last say. So the human figure in a lab, constructed with all possible Swiss thoroughness, seems slightly lost faced with the forces of nature, unable to control waterfalls that suddenly flow upwards and other strange phenomena.

Human arrogance and its disastrous consequences is addressed in the new work of Lebanese artist Salah Saouli, “The Passage”, shown at Galerie Nord in Berlin-Tiergarten. Taking the cruelty of cluster bombs and the cynicism of current endeavours at classifying some as “intelligent” - those that only hit a specific target - and therefore permissible by the German arms’ industry as his starting point, Saouli shows an installation of used shoes, lined up on the floor in a passageway linking one room of the gallery to another. To access the back room, the visitor has to step over the shoes on the floor, something that many visitors, myself included, at first hesitate at. A shoe lost on the site of an accident or a shoe left in the ruins of a bombardment more than anything else point to a human presence that is no longer there. A shoe is hardly ever lost by carelessness, mostly violence of some kind needs to be involved. Probably this makes a lost shoe, especially if it is from a child, so touching and tragic. “The Passage” is a very subtle and reflective work, one that leaves the visitor deeply moved, and for my case appalled by our industries’ cynicism.