What Does Resistance Look Like? 7 Middle East Women Artists From Tehran to Tripoli Answer
- Anisa Mosaiebiniya
- Sep 24
- 3 min read
Stitching Power, Memory, and Defiance Through Art
Introduction: A New Language of Protest In regions where speech is policed and truth is weaponized, artists often become the fiercest historians. Across the Middle East and North Africa, women artists have transformed traditional media into weapons of cultural resistance. From using human hair as thread to etch forbidden poetry, to reclaiming religious iconography, these seven female artists from Tehran to Tripoli offer radically intimate portrayals of dissent, identity, and survival.
This post highlights seven powerful artistic practices that answer the question: What does resistance look like?
1. Tala Madani (Iran)
Medium: Animation, PaintingResistance Tactic: Satire, Gender ReversalMadani uses humor and grotesque inversion to challenge patriarchy. Her surreal animations and paintings depict men in absurd, vulnerable scenarios—eating paint, melting, or crawling like infants. Her work exposes the fragility of authoritarian masculinity while reclaiming narrative control for female voices.
Takeaway: Resistance doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it mocks.
2. Huda Lutfi (Egypt)
Medium: Collage, Mixed MediaResistance Tactic: Hybrid Historical MontageA cultural historian by training, Lutfi blends pharaonic motifs, Islamic geometry, and pop culture into provocative collages. Her work critiques militarism, consumerism, and censorship while celebrating Egypt’s layered identities.
Takeaway: Cultural memory becomes a battleground. Art preserves what politics erases.
3. Zena Assi (Lebanon)
Medium: Painting, InstallationResistance Tactic: Urban SymbolismAssi maps the emotional toll of migration, conflict, and memory. Her dense cityscapes and fragmented figures embody Beirut’s chaos and resilience. Her installations echo the disjointed identities of those caught between borders.
Takeaway: The city is both shelter and battlefield.
4. Shirin Neshat (Iran/USA)
Medium: Photography, VideoResistance Tactic: Text as Body, Dual Channel NarrativesKnown for writing banned poetry across women’s faces, Neshat merges calligraphy and portraiture in powerful, political juxtapositions. Her dual-channel video works explore the tensions of exile, religion, and voice, particularly for women in post-revolutionary Iran.
Takeaway: The body can be both canvas and manifesto.
5. Ala Younis (Jordan)
Medium: Research-based InstallationResistance Tactic: Archival InterventionYounis uses forgotten archives, bureaucratic remnants, and state propaganda as raw material. Her installations question nationalist mythologies and reclaim erased narratives, especially around Arab women’s contributions to cultural and political history.
Takeaway: Resistance sometimes means unarchiving the truth.
6. Mounira Al Solh (Lebanon/Netherlands)
Medium: Textiles, Drawing, VideoResistance Tactic: Embroidered TestimonyHer ongoing project, I Strongly Believe in Our Right to Be Frivolous, features stitched portraits and stories of displaced people, especially Syrian refugees. She has even stitched banned poetry using strands of hair.
Takeaway: Intimacy is a radical act when public records are censored.
7. Nour Hage (Lebanon)
Medium: Textile, Fashion, InstallationResistance Tactic: Textile as Ancestral ProtestHage reclaims Arab textile heritage through gender-fluid silhouettes and handcrafted garments. Her work challenges colonial narratives of Arab identity and amplifies spiritual, pre-Islamic symbology. Threads become lines of resistance.
Takeaway: Resistance can be worn. And passed down.
Conclusion: From Symbol to Survival From Middle East Women Artists
These artists remind us that resistance isn’t always loud or violent. Sometimes it’s whispered through a needle, captured on film, or painted over propaganda. Their work is not only about survival, but about redefining beauty, power, and voice on their own terms.
Call to Action: Explore more Middle Eastern women artists on our Artists page and subscribe to our newsletter for new profiles each week.
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