In this performance and photographic series, Qinza Najm inserts her veiled, covered body into iconic Western art historical poses, from Botticelli’s Birth of Venus to 19th-century Orientalist odalisques, while fully encased in face masks, donated hijabs, and nara (traditional South Asian drawstrings). Created during her residency at Mass MoCA just weeks before the global pandemic, the work becomes eerily prophetic.

By embodying these poses within garments tied to both devotion and discipline, Najm confronts the colonial art canon’s absence of South Asian female agency. Her body becomes a site of rupture and reclamation—a living critique of who gets to be seen, mythologized, or protected. The sacred and the profane wrap around her like skin, transforming the historically passive muse into a radical witness.