The House of the Wind

Among the tragic news that came from Iraq at the time of the rise of the Taliban, one struck me more than the others for its painful power, both real and symbolic: that of a building, one of many in a bombed Iraqi city, which had collapsed; its façade, however, was still standing, with its glassless windows through which only the wind made its voice heard. The shutters of those windows were painted in colours…

Among the incredible rules dictated by fundamentalism, one forbade women to look out of any window facing a public street.

To ensure the ban was observed, and any infringement immediately discovered, the shutters of the women’s rooms had been painted in a fixed colour, so that behind windows of that colour no living silhouette was allowed to appear…

This refers to right-wing Islamic fundamentalism, with rules going beyond tradition – an extreme situation even for those cultures where fundamentalism is the rule.

I recreated that vivid image in my work The House of the Wind: unable to place them where the double tragedy occurred, I set the veiled faces of my women – 9 large-format photographs, 70 x 100 cm – on borrowed windows, to remember what happened and to make it a symbol of liberation from any inhuman oppression, while keeping alive the hope of new places and new possibilities of looking outwards, towards a new world in which everyone – but in this case especially women – can be protagonists and visible.

This last point – visibility – does not refer only to distant situations where the drama is more evident, but to needs present in our own culture too, where the invisibility imposed on those who do not conform to and please the dominant culture is subtler, but still present and harmful…

May the wind, then, blowing hard at our windows too, favour renewal and the new consciousness of humanity.