Orientalism and Neo-Orientalism in Middle East women's Contemporary Artstudy exhibition "Breaking the Veils" (2002) and "She who tells a story" (2013)

Women artists from Muslim societies and Middle East are confronted with visual clichés of "being a woman", "being a Muslim" and "being a Middle Easterner". Art exhibitions and events welcome those art works that reproduce the stereotypes of re-Orientalism and Neo-Orientalism. After the September 11 attacks, the number of art exhibitions focusing on Middle Eastern women increased. This was an opportunity for women artists to bring their issues into the spotlight of the public attention and world's media; on the other hand, women were dealt with some hidden expectations and stereotypes which held by Western art events, that this events tending to direct artistic experiences towards the Western stereotypes. In this article, by methodological approach of "event studies", we review some of the most important art events for the Middle East; also we focus on two exhibitions "Breaking the Veils" (2002, Greece), and "She who tells a story" (2013, USA) which were held with the aim of rethinking stereotypes. The results showed that the works of women artists from Middle East can be categorized into a bipolar spectrum: from the image of women suffering from war, the repressed beauty of the Orient lands, the pitiful oppression of women, to the image of resilient and powerful women. At both ends of this spectrum, from passive victimized women to rioters and anti-tradition activists, there are diverse works that cover a wide range of themes. Women artists are looking for a way to both criticize the limitations of patriarchal culture and overcome the reductionistic and exotic expectations from women's art. This difficult path must be taken against the expectations held by the art market and political expectations from art exhibitions.