amna Ilyas - The White Cast
Installation, Sculpture
From the past 5 years I have been working with female body then gradually I found out my self displaying the theoretical concepts and symbolic issues, I started working one characteristic of both the material and the body. And started teasing out the feminist themes and using their pictorial illustration in various forms .
Being a part of the Asian society I start facing problem being a Woman. I realized that I am still living in the male patriarchal society .
Probably each one of us is ashamed of only one thing – our body. As a nation we feel body being a burden that needs to be hidden under drapes or forgotten in some remote corner of our minds. In fact the society has a paradoxical relationship with the body. If on one – conscious – level, we try to avoid the body, neglect its functions and negate its demands; at the same instance we are obsessed with its form that delights us, invites us and entices us to watch bodies of others – from the opposite sex.
Usually it is the women of our society who suffer from the fascination of this kind – and scale. Being a part of this Asian society People leer at women who walk around, in simple clothes and normal situations. Yet at the same time, most men refuse to acknowledge their infatuation with the female form. Body for them is a state of sinfulness, sign of impurity and proof of human weakness. Thus body is hardly mentioned in polite gatherings and parts of bodies are not named in the civilized circles.
This woman is closed in, curled up and self contained. Somehow the nakedness of the body is protected by an act/desire of return . I alludes to this ‘eternal, rather eventual return’ with the postures that make the body
as an introvert entity.