Given its obviously confrontational nature, it’s a wonder that Shurooq Amin’s series of paintings entitled “It’s a Man’s World” were shown in Kuwait City at all. The exhibition lasted all of three hours before the secret police shut it down, citing complaints that the art was both “anti-Islamic” and “pornographic.” To her great credit, Amin viewed the closure not as a setback, but as inspiration for her next project. She was aided in that process by her young daughter, whose malapropism led to a eureka moment:
As soon as I recovered from the shutdown of my show, the pain of that, I immediately started working on the next series. It started with the title. My 12 year old daughter heard people talking about my show, so she came up to me and asked: “Mama, what does popcornographic mean?” I asked her why, and she said she heard people say my show was shut down because it was “popcornographic.” Of course I immediately knew what she meant. So it stuck. I thought: “This is perfect!” I decided to use the term against them by using the version my daughter used. This way nobody can censor it. And the series will explore the actual impact of censorship, lack of freedom of expression and all things taboo.
Check out several more paintings from the “It’s a Man’s World” series here.
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