I Am My Own GuardianReflections on Resistance Art

In November 2012 I published in a photo-essay a body of artworks titled IAmMy Own Guardian to criticize the discriminatory laws requiring male guardianship of adult women in Saudi Arabia (Muftah 2012). This series consists of four images, each of a single, larger-than-life woman's head wearing a headdress typically donned by Saudi men. The figure in each print uses rich black ink that strongly contrasts against vividly white paper. Two of the portrait visages look at the viewer (in black and white) and two look away (printed over a colorful, free-flowing cloudlike mist). I first exhibited the four portraits as large screen prints in November 2012 at Sydney College of the Arts as part of my honors degree. A small version of my artwork was included in a January 2015 Saudi exhibition in Jeddah titled Fast Forward: Inner Voices.¹ Interestingly enough, when state representatives came to inspect the exhibit they showed no interest and raised no objections. This deeply personal project was born of frustration with a system that favors men over women. After posting my images on my Tumblr account in 2012, users shared them on additional social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, without credit or attribution. The most widely circulated image was of a young woman wearing the Saudi male headdress (shumagh) with Arabic and English words across her face saying, "I am my own guardian" (fig. 1). This essay reflects on the intention and context of this body of artwork, how it evolved online, and criticism it received in Saudi Arabia after going viral in 2016.

In July of that year Human Rights Watch (2016) published a report titled "Boxed In: Women and Saudi Arabia's Male Guardianship System." The organization disseminated the report using the hashtag "together to end male guardianship," which motivated many Saudi womentospeak out on Twitter.² A group of politically and electronically discerning women created the Arabic hashtag "Saudi women demand an end to male guardianship" (Suʿudiyyat_nutalib_bi-isqat_al-wilaya) to articulate their grievances against their guardians and institutional discrimination carried out in the name of religion and culture. The Twitter campaign evolved into a worldwide feminist movement advocating for women's rights in Saudi Arabia. Soon thereafter many Saudi women involved in the campaign adopted my artwork. Twitter users shared the initial image hundreds of times, and numerous international media outlets reprinted it (often with my tweets) without permission, attribution, or both, especially in the early period. When I reclaimed ownership of the image in July 2016, many Saudi women and transnational allies showed their support of the campaign by using the image as their profile picture, buying T-shirts and stickers from my redbubble.com page, using it in videos, or creating new logos for the campaign using the original artwork. Within three months, the main image became iconic and was strongly associated with the campaign.

Figure 1.

I Am My Own Guardian

Despite its overwhelming popularity, some Saudi women publicly contested the image and refused to endorse it, engaging in heated online debates over the use of the shumagh. In 2012, after a Twitter user asked her to comment on my photoessay, Madawi Al-Rasheed expressed her reservations in a series of tweets that I learned of and responded to in 2014:

To be free is not to become [a] man, men are equally oppressed in Saudi Arabia.

To be truly free, women must be part of a national liberation movement that include[s] men and women.³

I responded that wearing the clothing item does not turn women into men.

Most critics based their objection on the religious premise that forbids women to dress like men. Some trolls said the image promotes a homosexual agenda, using the derogatory term for same-sex attracted individuals, makhanith. Other commenters argued that the use of the male headdress was too "masculine" to become a logo for a women's rights campaign. The religious argument fizzled out fast while the "feminist" discussion continued as some suggested that a logo...