Body uprising

How can the body resist what covers it? How to enjoy wearing something I never chose? Is it haram to show the silhouette of my body? Am I allowed to fetishise a symbol of patriarchal oppression that I grew up with? How do I free myself from such a mental prison?

These questions drive this piece, where I use the abaya, traditionally a patriarchal and masculine garment in my cultural context, as a feminine, fluid and transformative element. The abaya becomes a site of tension: sometimes hiding the body completely, sometimes squeezed tightly around my waist to reveal the silhouette, sometimes catching the light so that the audience only sees a shifting shadow behind the fabric. It moves between concealment and exposure, between discipline and desire, between what society expects and what I choose to embody.

Through these shifts, the garment is repurposed into a tool of play, resistance and self-claiming. The piece invites the audience into the tension of wanting to see what is behind the abaya while asking what happens when a body refuses to perform the roles assigned to it and creates its own physical truth.