Space, Gaze and Femineity: Representation of Women in Architectural Spaces in Persian Miniature Painting (Timurid to Safavid eras)

Architecture can be compared with the veil (or hijab) in terms of its visual and spatial functions. While the veil may overtly conceal, it may also define the woman it clothes in the same way that architecture may simultaneously support and represent its function. Both can deny or direct vision, and mediate space. However, whilst the veil has often been invoked in critiques of the cultural construction of women, the agential role of architecture has largely been overlooked. Using architecture as a lens, this art-historical thesis examines the representation of female figures in Persian miniature paintings as a tactic to reveal and interpret the changing place and power of women in pre-modern Persian society and culture. Architectures of many descriptions, from mobile tents to monumental mosques and palaces, are among the most consistent and recognisable elements with which Persian miniature paintings are composed, and within which the female figures depicted are literally framed. Through a historical comparison of the architectural framing of the female figure in Persian miniature paintings, produced during the transformation of cultural traditions from the Turko-Mongol practices of the Timurid dynasty to the Irano-Islamic cultural norms and pratcices associated with the Safavid dynasty, the research examines how women were placed and defined in these spaces – sedentary and mobile, and public as well as private – to better understand the changes in social status and mobility that they were experiencing over this same period. Although previous scholars have recognised Persian miniature paintings as a potentially rich alternative source of primary historical evidence where written sources are lacking or silent, the conceptual distance and visual ambiguity of that medium relative to present day artistic practice and perceptual conventions have presented persistent obstacles to interpretation and understanding. Independently, both the representation of Women, and the representation of Architecture in Persian miniature paintings have been the focus of valuable but unconnected and differently oriented studies by previous scholars. What has not been studied so closely and methodically before is the spatial structure and arrangement of women in relation to the architecture in (and of) these images, and how a rigorous analysis of that relationship might enhance current understanding of women in the socio-historical contexts depicted in Persian miniature paintings. Methodological experimentation undertaken in this study has sought to enhance how the multifocal perspective characteristic of architectural elements and spaces depicted in Persian miniature paintings could be better understood. This has resulted in a significant extension and refinement of an analytical method suggested by previous scholars, but evidently never developed and applied so thoroughly before. The particular folding and pop-up technique developed here produces three-dimensional paper projections of Persian miniature paintings through which the spatial arrangement and structure of the architectural elements depicted can be decoded. Using this spatially expanded architecture as a lens and apparatus to view and to site the figures of women in these paintings more accurately, the study then examines the vision and visibility of these women and how this mediated their power within physical and social space. Historically and culturally specific theories of vision and the gaze are engaged in the analysis in two ways: first, with respect to specific ways of seeing reflected in the conventions of Persian miniature painting and its visual representation of the outer world; and, second, in terms of the more universal concepts and acts of seeing in Islamic society, culture and religion, and the way these define codes of behaviour concerning veiling and the spatial polarisation of the sexes. Through this combination of visual and spatial tactics, this research advances the study of the past by enhancing the analytical depth at which we can interpret and better understand historically and culturally distant visual materials, enabling sharper and even novel observations that challenge certain assumptions about the place(s) of women in Islamic societies, cultures, and art. The study indicates further avenues for the extension of such spatially focused visual inquiry in the Art Historical field of Islamic visual arts and miniature painting studies in particular, and in gender and women’s studies more generally.

Author dc:creator

• Abooali, Sareh

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Scriver, Peter
• Sobti, Manu P.

• Space
• gaze
• femineity
• representation of women
• architectural spaces
• Persian miniature painting
• Timurid era
• Safavid era

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2440/134181

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digital.library.adelaide.edu.au:2440/134181