Art for Resistance: I Am My Own Guardian

- Abhishek Bhosale

‘I Am My Own Guardian’ is an Artistic work by MS Saffaa, Which became the face of resistance movement against guardianship law in Saudi Arabia. I Am My Own Guardian is a personal response of an woman artist to institutionalized patriarchy. It is a strike, a stance against injustice.  

Power structure in Saudi Arabia is fundamentally based on sexual differences and female – male binary. Saudi Arabia has guardianship laws which discriminates women on the basis of sex. According to these laws, the life of a Saudi woman is fully in the hands of another person, a man, and her rights are left up to him, rather than the rule of law, to either uphold or deny. Such a system renders women invisible, ignored, voiceless, oppressed, and marginalized.  Many work places and universities demand a guardian’s consent for female employees and students. Renting a flat, undergoing hospital treatment or filling a legal claim often also requires a male guardian’s permission, and there is very little recourse for women whose guardians abuse them or severely limit their freedom. 

Saffaa created the “I am my own Guardian” mural in 2012.  Now it has become a part of grassroots resistance movement. In an interview given to GreenLeft weekly saffaa told “I create art as an act of peaceful protest where I exercise my right to civil disobedience. I wanted to add my voice to twitter campaign that started last year that demands abolishing male guardianship laws in Saudi Arabia”

The 39-year-old artist Ms Saffaa is currently studying in Australia. She is pursuing PhD in Visual arts from University of Sydney. In 2012, Saffaa was finishing an honors degree at University of Sydney when she was told by the Saudi Arabia government, that she needed to live with a male guardian to supervise her. 

In February 2017, her mural in Melbourne’s Brunswick was vandalized. The vandal defaced images of women wearing the traditional Saudi male head dress and other portraits of Saudi Women activists, as well as the slogan “Radical Muslim”. On this incident, she added “The vandalism is an act of masculinity, physically and visually”. She thinks, this act as a visual assault aimed at silencing women’s voices, erasing their identities, and excluding them from public spaces.

Some of the women characters in saffaa’s murals are fictional representations of Saudi women. Others are portraits of real life female activists and artists include Balgish Al Rashid and Samar Badwai. She used male headdress as a symbol of Power. Women in Saudi would not dare to wear on in public. It is culturally unacceptable and would probably get them arrested or harassed.  Dressing women like men may not seem subversive in many countries; it became a part of western cultures. But in Saudi Arabia it disrupts gendered expectations of what women should dress and look like. From saffaa’s point of view, “it is my way of saying that this is power belongs to me and I am taking it back”.

Human Rights watch published two reports, eight years apart, highlighting the human rights abuse stemming from the guardianship laws. The first one, 2008’s Perpetual Minors, provides a comprehensive list of lawful abuses used against women: denying women the right to education, employment, health, equality before the law, freedom of movement, and equality in marriage. The second report, Boxed In, was published last year. It puts forward immediate recommendations to ministries that impose guardianship laws and general recommendations to King Salman.

Nothing has changed since these reports were published. However, Saudi women were inspired by last year’s report and launched their own Twitter campaign that quickly gained international momentum and support. In September 2016, Saudi women filed petition to end male guardianship system. A petition signed by 14,000 Saudi women was handed to the government.

When saffaa started tweeting about abolishing male guardianship and her artistic work, she was reported to Saudi authorities for creating and disseminating “advertising” materials that incite women to break the law. She is facing various forms of threats: intimidation, online bullying, targeted harassment, and the defacing of the mural. She considers this as an indirect threat.  Still she thinks her work is meaningless without the personal and political risks involved.

We all hope MS Saffaa’s work will provoke radical social transformation and open the door for new possibilities for women in Saudi Arabia.

References

Malik, S. A personal attack on muslim women : Ms Saffaa mural defaced in Melbourne . The Guardian . (5 February 2017).

Malik, S. Ms Saffaa protest art and the fledgling saudi Arabia women's rights movemet. The Guardian . (30 November 2016).

Oh, R. We have a Voice - artist confronts saudi Arabia's male guardianship laws. PBS Newshour- Art Beat . (16 October 2016).

Saudi Women file Petiton to end male guardianship system. BBC News. (29 september 2016).

Vinyan, E. Saudi feminist artist's works inspires struggle for change. Greenleft weekly . (19 May 2017).