What if I want to waterski? And other questions

Dates: 10 to 24 June
Times: 11am to 8pm daily
Venue: The Substation Gallery
Admission: Free

Artist talk: Saturday 13 June, 12 noon

What if I want to water ski? And other questions A Digital Media Installation by Victoria Cattoni. In this beguilingly titled exhibition, What if I want to water-ski? And other questions, artist Victoria Cattoni asks us to unveil our perceptions and perhaps, misconceptions, of the Muslim headscarf for women, otherwise known generically as hijab, or locally as tudung.

Part of a broader project, ‘Re-Dressing the Veil’, begun in 2007 in Malaysia with the support of an Australia Council for the Arts grant, the exhibition What if I want to water-ski? And other questions draws on Cattoni’s ongoing exploration of cross-cultural experience, taking us on a journey between Singapore, Penang and Cairns/Mareeba in North-eastern Australia via the hijab.

This is a journey that firstly documents the headscarf as it is worn by Muslim women today in each of the places where the project has taken place – Singapore, Penang, Cairns and Mareeba – but with a focus here at The Substation, on Muslim women in Singapore. These photographic portraits, as well as documenting a cross-section of types of tudung worn locally, are intended to challenge mainstream representations of women in headscarf. The photographs offer instead, very personal depictions of the Muslim woman in headscarf, locating her as ‘portrait-able’. For whilst Muslim women in headscarf are an intrinsic and visible part of the social fabric and landscape of Singapore, their very ‘familiarity’ with all of its attached assumptions can simultaneously render them distant.

In addition to, and in dialogue with the photographic portraits, the video work in the exhibition reveals perceptual and personal journeys of individuals involved, who in the main, do not wear hijab and who are not Muslim. We witness these individuals trying on headscarf for the first time, reacting in very different ways. We view and listen to these women as they respond to seeing themselves in headscarf. We watch as they explore their thoughts and feelings on it, as they consider the headscarf as a garment, symbol and inadvertently, a cultural text. While it might seem like an opportunity to just dress-up in something exotic, by demystifying the hijab, we actually come closer to personalising something that might otherwise seem far away.

The installation encompasses video and digital photographs, as well as books that are documents of past direct audience interaction. The audience at The Substation will also be invited to contribute to books.

A preview of the work was recently exhibited in Australia [December 2008] and a segment included in the Jakarta Biennale Arena: Fluid Zones [February 2009]. The work being presented at The Substation is the most extensive presentation of work from the project to date and will precede an exhibition at the Penang State Gallery in early 2010.