Echo of Islam in the West: Reactions to the Wearable Mosque

By Azra Aksamija

Spring 2009 | ArteZine

What the conflicts over the newly planned mosques in countries such as Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Italy, and the United States have in common is the attitude that it is acceptable to build a new mosque, as long as it does not look like one.  Notwithstanding the fact that Muslim citizens in these countries have a legal right to build their places of worship, such an understanding of the mosque as a specific building type very much goes against its fluid architectural concept and its multifaceted formal possibilities. While a lack of understanding and knowledge is evident in such debates, the growing public visibility of Muslims in Western Europe and the United States conditions an increasing fear of and preoccupation with the “other.” Ongoing debates over cultural and religious pluralism in the West also reveal the xenophobic and orientalist thinking that often informs these discussions.

By what creative means might one integrate Muslim diasporas in the “West” into these discussions? Can art inspire and empower increasingly alienated Muslim communities? In what ways can an artistic and architectural representation of an Islamic community contribute to better cross-cultural understanding?

Over the past four years, these questions have inspired me to develop a series of art projects that I have called the “Wearable Mosques”– clothes that can be fashioned into minimal prayer spaces. A wearable mosque is a portable religious device through which I have tried to deconstruct the prevalent image of the Muslim as an alien “other.” While it can accommodate the ritual prayer of at least two worshippers, it is also as an intercultural communicator. Its design is not uniform and the form it takes in different settings is meant to express both the multilayered identity of the person wearing it and the cultural context in which they are located. These ‘individual facades’ represent the specific experiences and needs of diasporic Muslims living in different geographical, cultural, and political contexts. This emphasis on the representation of individual — rather than collective — identity is particularly important to the work, since the project aims to question the common assumption that “Islam,” the “Middle East,” or the “West” are monolithic structures.

I have explored the idea of the wearable mosque as a communicator of personal prayers, desires, needs, and concerns through a series of ‘mini-mosque’ prototypes developed in response to particular settings. For example, in the United States, I designed the Nomadic Mosque (2005), a female transformable suit to critique the discrimination and violence directed against Muslims in America following September 11 (Fig.1). The Nomadic Mosque provides a tool for Muslims to assert their constitutional right to practice their religion. By wearing the piece, a Muslim can both reveal his/her religious identity, and camouflage it, when needed. The suit can also represent a person’s cultural background, social status, and professional affiliation. In sum, the Nomadic Mosque can express a Muslim’s versatile identities, beyond the religious one. The design of this wearable mosque also integrates cultural elements from American society, opening up novel spaces for negotiation between traditional and modern Islamic societies.

Fig1 – Nomadic Mosque, 2005,female suit that can unfold into a mini-mosque for two peopleFig1a – Nomadic Mosque, 2005,female suit that can unfold into a mini-mosque for two people

Another iteration of this project entitled the Dirndlmoschee(2005) functions as a hybrid device for an intercultural dialogue between the local community and Turkish immigrants in the small Austrian town of Strobl / Wolfgangsee (Fig.2). The piece is inspired by the nomadic tradition of assimilating qualitative characteristics of a place into one’s own context. The garment is designed to resemble a traditional Austrian dress made of locally found materials and souvenirs, whose apron can unfold into a prayer rug large enough for three worshippers. In the mosque configuration, the traditional shoulder scarf opens up into a veil. The silk decoration at the scarf edge playfully references a person’s hair, which is actually hidden by the veil (Fig.3). The belt carries a compass with a carabineer attached, from which prayer beads hang. The prayer beads are decorated with little multi-tool Swiss Army knives, locally found souvenirs from which the crosses were not removed, but re-symbolized as a decoration (Fig. 4).

Fig2 – Dirndlmoschee, 2006, Transformation of the Austrian traditional dress into a wearable mosqueFig3 – Dirndlmoschee, 2005, traditional shoulder scarf used as a veil 
Fig3a – Dirndlmoschee, 2005, traditional shoulder scarf used as a veilFig4 – Dirndlmoschee, 2005, local souvenirs incorporated as decoration

Nomadic Mosque and the Dirndlmoschee evolved from my conceptual, rather than formal, understanding of the mosque as an ephemeral space, which can switch programmatically from a secular to a religious function. Each wearable mosque project includes a site- and person-specific prototype design, alongside the discussions I have had about its conceptualization with different people in different places. In these discussions, the wearable mosques act as an incentive to critically engage both Muslims and non-Muslims. On the one hand, the wearable mosques are meant to evoke a more active involvement of Muslims in the discussions about their visibility and integration in the West. On the other hand, the varied interpretations and changing meanings of these pieces in different contexts can raise awareness about the great diversity of Islamic cultures in the West and raise awareness about their social dynamics.

My first interaction with another Muslim while wearing the Nomadic Mosque occurred during the shooting of the video at the Revere Beach in Boston, USA. When I spontaneously approached a passer-by Muslim woman, who happened to be sitting nearby and invited her to pray with me on the Nomadic Mosque, she agreed without hesitation. The fact that she was not puzzled by my strange request is suggestive of an increasingly elastic and inclusive understanding of Islamic practice among young Muslims in the West. What was also interesting in this coincidental encounter was that the unfolding and use of the dress provoked a bonding between two strangers through communal action (Fig. 5). In this situation, the artwork is not necessarily the mosque-suit itself, but the social interaction provoked by an artistic medium.

Fig5 – Nomadic Mosque, 2005, video still, communal prayer with a coincidental passerby at the Revere Beach in Boston Fig 5a – Nomadic Mosque, 2005, video still, communal prayer with a coincidental passerby at the Revere Beach in Boston

Encouraged by her positive feedback, my next step was to approach the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. The piece provoked mainly sympathetic reactions among students, and generated discussions about fashion and veiling within the American Muslim community – a practice that continues to generate heated debate (Fig. 6). I also met with three students in various public spaces on the MIT campus, where we used male and female prototypes for prayer (Fig.7). Aside from discussions between students of the MSA and some passers-by who were intrigued by the pieces, the negotiation of prayer locations by the men and women praying was particularly interesting. Since wearable mosques allow gender segregation to be negotiated anew with each prayer, the MSA students arranged themselves into a constellation where men prayed parallel to women, yet slightly in front of them. In this sense, the way in which wearable mosques are utilized in each context is also suggestive of the particular gender dynamics that inform communal relations.

Fig6 – Nomadic Mosque, 2005, video still, interaction with the MSA students at MITFig6a – Nomadic Mosque, 2005, video still, interaction with the MSA students at MIT
Fig7- Nomadic Mosque, 2005, video still, communal
prayer with MSA students in public space at MIT

Building on these initial  encounters, I continued to present the wearable mosque project   to diverse audiences, both Muslim and non-Muslim: I gave formal presentations in galleries, discussed the conceptualization of the project with students at high schools and universities as well as with children and youth at a Unitarian church in Boston. The pieces were also exhibited in various art venues in the USA, Canada, Spain, Germany, Israel, France, and Bosnia-Herzegovina (Fig. 8). In each setting, the wearable mosques generated debate and discussion about the history of Islamic religious architecture and contemporary identity politics through creative engagement with the works. Recurrent topics under discussion were the conceptual and architectural definition of the mosque; the shared and individual markers of identity within Islamic societies; and art’s capacity to construct and deconstruct the cultural and religious stereotypes of Muslims.

Fig8 – Nomadic Mosque, 2005, project presentation at the Massachusetts
College of Art with a live transmission in Second Life

Critiques of the project have varied depending on the audience and site of presentation. For example, the Nomadic Mosque was not recognized as a mosque by an American imam because it lacked a minbar (the pulpit used by a cleric for Islamic Friday sermon). While the imam’s perception that the absence of the minbar undermined his own position as cleric, the wearable mosque denies neither the spatial hierarchies of the mosque, nor of the prayer ritual. The location of the person leading the prayer, who is usually in front of other worshippers, can be decided by the group, with or without the wearable mosque. Yet, the absence of a minbar did not seem to bother the Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina, who favoured the educational aspects of the piece – believing that the questions that the mosque project provoked could contribute to a better understanding between cultures. In a review by an Austrian journalist, the use of little multi-tool Swiss Army knives hanging among the prayer beads on the apron of the Drindlmoschee dress was described as “threatening,” despite the fact that these 3 cm (ca.1”) long knives are not functional as any sort of tool or cutting device. The journalist’s interpretation was diametrically opposed to my intention, which was to provide a reference to the location in which the dress was made by decorating it with local souvenirs. By contrast, a Turkish woman from Strobl, with whom I collaborated, wanted  to buy the wearable mosque, which she found attractive and useful.

Audience reactions to the wearable mosque when presented in an artistic context often differ from those in a more political one. For example, this summer I presented the project as part of an educational event organized by the Austrian Green Party in the City Hall in Vienna. The event, entitled ‘Building Mosques in the 21st Century. But How?’ was meant to add complexity to the ongoing pro/contra debate about the building of mosques and minarets in Austria. In the discussion and the subsequent feedback from journalists and critics, however, it became clear that the title of the event led people to believe that the project offered some kind of solution to the current mosque controversy. With this expectation in mind, some of the audience viewed the wearable mosque series as an inadequate response to the needs of local Muslim communities in Austria. The argument brought up here was that Austrian Muslims required ‘real’ buildings in which not only to convene and pray, but in which other services could be provided, such as religious education and family counseling. Responding to these critiques, I made clear that the Nomadic Mosque and the Dirndlmoschee were neither intended as an ultimate solution for mosque architecture of the 21st century, nor to accommodate these particular needs. They were created in response to very specific sites or persons. Unfortunately, the social aspects of the wearable mosque –the fact that each piece can accommodate the worship of at least two people or that a community experience can be created among those wearing them – was not legible to the audience. While I disagree with the view that religious education or family counseling can only take place in ‘real’ buildings, new prototypes of the wearable mosque would need to be developed to accommodate such functions specifically.

One journalist’s response to the wearable mosque was particularly revealing about the ways in which the intended meaning of an art work can be reconfigured to convey a wholly different message. While the article, “Art Project: Wearable Mosque – What’s the Use of a Minaret?” was well intentioned and alive to the issues now animating discussions about the place of Islam in Austria, it focused exclusively on the ability of the wearable mosque to  ‘solve’  the conflict over visibility of regional Muslims. The article incorporated provocative statements from the presentation I had given at the City Hall in Vienna, which were taken out of context and reassembled into an argument that could be summarized as: “Great! Muslims do not have to build mosques, when they can simply wear them!” In this way the work could be used to lend credence to the claims of right-wing politicians ¬advocating a position far removed from that which I had been trying to convey through the piece. My choice of portable architecture as the medium for this intervention was aimed at deconstructing not only the territoriality of sacral space, but also the stereotypes and power relations that inform them. The point in which both prototypes fulfilled their goal, however, was in reframing the discussion about contemporary mosque architecture in general, since they succeeded in raising new questions about the mosque’s form and its role as a marker of community identity. Criticism of the piece also shed light on the specific needs and social problems of Austrian Muslims. By helping to raise awareness about the problems facing this community, this project also lends support to calls for government action directed at greater integration of Muslims living in Austria.

What have I learnt from these discussions?  Audience reactions to the wearable mosque in Vienna cast a bare light on the responsibilities that one bears as an artist, and also on the need to be aware of the particular valences and meanings that works can take on in different political and cultural contexts. Exhibiting the wearable mosque series in art galleries encodes them as site-specific art works with an activist orientation, but not necessarily as a form of political action or public intervention. Interaction with the general public – in civic settings like Vienna’s City Hall, on the beach in Boston, or on the grounds of MIT – has been crucial for this work. Without the engagement and feedback I received from people in these various settings, the project’s message would have become self-contained and the educative component of the piece lost.

However, in the context of ongoing debates about the construction of mosques in Austria and the place that Muslims occupy within Austrian culture and society more generally, the wearable mosque project took on a new significance. The co-option of the work by those wishing to undermine the position and claims of this minority community, points to the misuses and risks that public art interventions such as this can entail. Since this site-specific art project has generated diverse effects in different contexts, mapping the various reactions to the piece as it moves from one context to another has allowed for a far more nuanced engagement with the issues addressed in the work. Reactions to the wearable mosques suggest that the ongoing conflict over the mosque in the West varies from place to place, depending on the social, political, and cultural factors at play. The intentionally paradoxical ideas entailed in the design of the wearable mosque (that, for example, the mosque as a communal space can take shape as a series of interconnected individual sites and not as a single hall) allow for multifaceted readings, which can help render such conflicts visible.

In light of the misinterpretations that this kind of work can involve, I think it is important that each additional prototype of the wearable mosque that I develop remains a site- and person-specific work in order to underscorethe heterogeneous identities of Islamic cultures. By making this heterogeneity visible, I hope to contribute to a more complex debate about the Islam in the West, understanding it not as a monolithic structure, but rather as a dynamic process, which allows for its own change. The wearable mosque can provide not only a critical space for discussion and debate among Muslims, but also an instrument to shape their ongoing process of transformation in a more active and participatory way.

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