crowd of women wearing black burqas and holding bamboo poles at bottom; background has many ladybugs, with a higher concentration at the bottom and at top center to URC

%C2%A9 Ambreen Butt. All rights reserved.

Untitled (Ladybugs), 2008

Not on Viewexpand_more

Ambreen Butt’s “Daughter of the East” memorializes the scores of young women and girls who died in a violent confrontation between Islamic fundamentalists and the Pakistani military during the July 2007 siege of Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, a conservative center of religious teaching in Islamabad. Most victims were students at the nearby Jamia Hafsa madrasah complex. The mosque’s clerics opposed the Pakistani government’s social and economic liberalization and called for the overthrow of President Pervez Musharraf and the imposition of traditional sharia law. Inspired by the tradition of Indian and Persian miniaturists, Butt created a series of highly detailed images that, paradoxically, are both decorative and disconcerting. This seeming contradiction mirrors the event’s complicated narrative of fear, violence, vulnerability, and resilience among the women and girls who remained true to their religious beliefs but were reportedly used as human shields by armed male defenders of the mosque.

Details
Title
Untitled (Ladybugs)
Artist Life
Pakistani (active United States), born 1969
Role
Artist
Accession Number
2018.38.2.1
Provenance
Wingate Studio, Hinsdale, N.H. (publisher); sold to MIA, 2018.
Curator Approved

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crowd of women wearing black burqas and holding bamboo poles at bottom; background has many ladybugs, with a higher concentration at the bottom and at top center to URC

© Ambreen Butt. All rights reserved.

Because of © restrictions, we can only show you a small image of this artwork.