ODALISQUE

About

With her exhibition, ODALISQUE, the artist KARMA relates the traditional art history genre to the continued commodification and exoticisation of the non-western female body through modern slavery, pornography and prostitution. In doing so, the artist opens up a discourse about the continuity of white, male, heterosexual hegemony within and with the help of the art world and promotes a decolonisation of our collective, aesthetic consciousness. 

The derivative origins of the word Odalisque, lie in the Turkish term ‘odalik’, from oda, chamber or room, which in turn refers to women who worked as chambermaids at the Ottoman court. In popular artistic consciousness, Odalisques are ornate, sensual paintings of beautiful concubines in various states of undress, (engaged in being admired), reclining, smiling, inviting the viewer into her exotic, ‘oriental’ surroundings. Although an established artistic genre, for KARMA, the Odalisque is a derogatory visual celebration of the colonisation and enslavement of women and perhaps the “painting as pornography” pinnacle of woman as object of the male gaze: “The Odalisque is in actuality the colonialised eastern ‘other,’ often depicted with milk-white skin. She is the property and sexual bounty of a powerful, non-Caucasian man, the Sultan. An exotic concubine caged and without personal autonomy or volition, she is always available, permanently perched at the ready to satisfy his every sexual appetite. In this sense, Odalisques are hybridised, perverse colonial fantasies that precede the racist storylines found in contemporary pornography. The Odalisque is a painting of a woman held captive, her body supine, without physical strength. Her face, ordinarily, gazes directly out of her canvas prison, her entire identity crystallised into a lavish fantasy of permanent sexual availability for the elite white colonisers who purchased and often also commissioned the paintings. She is the symbolic essence of female subordination.“ 

Inspired by the history not only of the Odalisque, but by Centrum itself, which once was used as a brothel, KARMA presents her paintings as part of an encompassing installation, in which soft, intimate structures are used to signify the female body and draped and stretched materials echo the cocooned captivity of the original Odalisque paintings. Appropriating an oriental aesthetic, which can still be found in contemporary brothels, combined with overt visual exaggerations of the feminine as kitsch, the artist simulates and amplifies the background to the spectacle of masculine commodification of the female body. The artist has also integrated actual sex toys and bondage props into the installation as visual reminders of the tools of domination once used on slaves that are now integral part of the fantasy world of BDSM role-play. Thus, ODALISQUE creates a semantic link between contemporary BDSM and the power structures of master-slave-relationships of the past, which – when it came to female slaves – often involved acts of domination and sexual abuse. 

In our contemporary culture, BDSM practices, readily available through online pornography and social media, are more widespread and popularised than ever. Many women choose to inhabit the role of “the slave” to their partner’s role of “the master,” as a form of personal choice – a phenomenon which might play a part in what leads many to believe that we live at a time when women have gained complete freedom of choice in terms of personal volition, sexuality and work. Yet, according to the statistics of Human Rights organisations that monitor contemporary forms of bonded labour and sex trafficking, countless women, who do not have the economic and educational privileges of our culture, continue to be forced to work as slaves. By revealing the inherent racism, sexism and commodification of canonised art to be the same as our ubiquitous, contemporary visual culture, KARMA seeks to highlight the sustained struggle that women today still face with regards to their own autonomy, be it bodily and sexually or metaphorically in the creation of their own images and identities.

The project realised at Centrum is generously supported by the Canadian Embassy.