覆罩的異國情調雪潤•內夏特(Shirin Neshat)早期的女性攝影作品

本文探討的焦點是雪潤•內夏特早期的攝影作品，這些作品在歐美藝術圈的體制（包括美術館及雙年展的機制）中展出後，便備受矚目，使得內夏特在短短幾年之間於西方藝術圈迅速竄紅。本文欲從她作品中對於女性的呈現，尤其是一系列關於伊朗革命女性的攝影作品，藉由關於罩頭／罩身的女人(veiled women)圖像，來探討這個充滿東方主義色彩的穆斯林女性刻板形象。本文以歷史性的角度，將罩頭／罩身的女人置於再現的視覺傳統中，一方面回顧早期東方主義窺視下的穆斯林女性再現，尤其是十九世紀末、二十世紀初期的攝影作品；另一方面則檢視在西方大眾媒體所呈現的穆斯林女性，以作為理解內夏特作品的歷史性脈絡。此外，本文也梳理了罩頭／罩身的女人於伊斯蘭文化中的意義，在不同的歷史時期，其背後所指涉的意義也不盡相同。在東方主義論述與伊斯蘭文化脈絡的對照下，筆者認為，內夏特作品中的穆斯林婦女具有某種能動性(agency)，不論是（對西方觀者無效的）詩文的表達、或只是行動的暗示、或主動的回看觀者，與觀者的眼神對視，甚至是以軍事的形式挑戰西方的觀者，這些都無非在賦予作品中女主角一種主體性，而非只是如過去一般是個被觀看的客體。內夏特作品中罩頭／罩身的女人不只「被看」、不只「觀看」，同時也要求觀者以新的「眼力」「眼界」觀看之。

關鍵字

雪潤•內夏特；罩頭／罩身的女人；殖民主義；東方主義；穆斯林女性再現；頭罩／身罩

並列摘要

Shirin Neshat's early photographs have received wide acclaim ever since they made their debut on the European and American art scenes, and contributed to making Neshat a popular name in Western art circles in a matter of a few years. This paper focuses on the images of veiled women in these photographs, and offers a discussion of the stereotypes of Muslim women, and their Orientalist dimension, through a reading of the various means employed by Neshat to represent women, in particular Iranian female revolutionaries. From a historical perspective, this paper situates veiled women in the traditional visual context of representation. A second section is structured on two themes: 1) revisiting the representation of veiled Muslim women under the gaze of early Orientalism, most notably in the photographs of late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century colonial postcards; and 2) examining the presentation of Muslim women in Western media in an attempt to understand the genealogy of Neshat's work. In a third section, I endeavour to disentangle the various meanings of veiled women in different phases of Islamic history. At the juncture between Orientalist discourse and Islamic history, I argue that under Neshat's lens Muslim women do in fact possess agency. By using poetry (Persian inscriptions unknown to Westerners), by insinuating a potential for action, by showing her subjects deliberately gazing straight back at the spectator, or defying Western viewers by holding guns in their hands, Neshat succeeds in attributing subjectivity to the female protagonist, thus abolishing her traditional status as objectified spectacle. The veiled women in Neshat's work are not merely rendered as the seen or the seeing, but they demand that the spectator looks at them from a new horizon and with new eyes.