Jumana Emil 'Abboud

Sainthood & Sanity-hood

Jumana Emil 'Abboud explores the twin territories of sainthood and sanity. She addresses the constituents of the word 'sainthood' - the 'saint' originates in the mind, in language, in the word. It is a body of narratal knowledge that functions as a formative myth. According to that narrative, the figure of the saint in western culture and in the Christian Arab culture embodies respect, sacrifice and suffering; it is the ideal model for female behavior: a virgin devoid of sexuality (or one whose sexuality is denied). The 'hood' as a covering cloak expresses the body's physical act - movement or nonmovement. The woman, in this sense, is the subject of a conditioned movement, one restrained by the hood signified as an aura of sanctity.

The artist creates a link between sanity and the hood as signifying the body's range of action. This range between the pseudo-saint and the pseudo-sane is a living space for female identity devoid of privacy, conducting her life vis-?-vis models of sacrifice, suffering and redemption.

In her works, the artist examines the schemes used to represent key women in the culture within which she creates, and the link between these schemes and the price paid by women in their real lives. The narrative of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, as the artist reads it, serves, in this respect, as a guide for the woman's actual life. The text, in its wide sense, points at female devotion, sacrifice, humility and suffering involved in such acceptance of her destiny.

Another narrative recurring in the works is the miracle of sainthood. The works allude to St. Lucy whose eyes were plucked out, and St. Agatha whose breasts were severed for the sake of Christianity. The woman's sainthood, her transformation into a public-religious figure that possesses the power to change reality through miracles - all these are acquired at the cost of mutilation of the flesh.

The artist examines the total influence of this formative text on the lives of many women: private women, family members, famous women, and anonymous women. The works convey a shift from the public to the private, from the symbolic to the personal. The treatment of the saint's figure and the multiple modes for representing her image are a direct extension of the historical-religious ritual of turning to a female figure for help. The narrative's re-reading is performed out of belief in and need for a powerful, influential female role model.

[@Lead@] The range between the pseudo-saint and the pseudo-sane is a living space for female identity sustained vis-?-vis models of sacrifice, suffering and redemption

[Titles]

1 The artist signifies the veil as an extension of that metaphorical cloak. The cloak is the fallen halo. It is the transition from spiritual, insubstantial speech to life itself. In real life, the artist says, the veil is the sign for a woman's sanity. It signifies the unbridgeable gap between her physical, sexual existence and the model of the saint. The public sphere marks her lack of sanity and her indelible sexual physicality. However, the veil also allows her to maintain her sanity in an intimate, private, physical sphere. She is invisible, yet she can see. On this borderline between the private and the public, between sanity and sainthood, and between Arab-Christian, Western Christian and Arab Muslim cultural systems, the artist revisits the figures of strong, highly inspiring women.

2 The public figure of St. Lucy as a sculpture, an icon, is based on the story that her sculptured likeness in various cathedrals around the world has been known to shed tears of blood, oil or water.

3 The works refer to a Palestinian-Christian religious ritual whereby pilgrims turn to St. Lucy for help, to free them from physical and emotional pains. They place at the foot of the sculpture representations of ailing body parts, requests and offerings as compensation for the physical price paid by the saint herself.

4 In the show, the artist creates an altar of her own where she accounts for the price of sacrifice, for the heartaches, and for the compensation in the form of an industry of gifts granted to those who are willing to sacrifice their bodies and hearts for pseudo-sainthood and pseudo-sanity.