3 Disgraces after Rubens

Amber Hammad is a Pakistani born, Sydney based visual artist, academic and researcher. She is currently a Post- Graduate Master of Fine Arts student, and recipient of the prestigious Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship at UNSW, Sydney. Her works have been exhibited widely across the world at many galleries and museums such as Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Diocesano Museum of Milano Italy and Apexart New York, USA. Her work addresses her identity within the framework of her race, religion, culture and gender, as she interrogates women’s attire and agency through her versatile art practice.

3 Disgraces after Rubens is an appropriation of Rubens’s painting, where the artist herself juxtaposes three nude female figures with three variations of modest contemporary Pakistani attire, simultaneously veiling and unveiling the female body visually, while activating her agency of choosing to veil or not to veil her own body. Amber describes that anxieties around women’s veiled and unveiled bodies have been present in almost all cultures and religions and are relative even today. From female nude figures in art history serving male hegemony and gaze, to our local context with Pauline Hanson’s Burqa stunt and the success of the Burkini, all suggest this subject's relativity.