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ZEHRA AHMED Ahmed's work is a mixed media video installation featuring a life-sized projection of a dark man in a kulta breakdancing over a beat-box accompaniment. In a darkened room, this figure illuminates Arabic graffiti which has been spray painted onto the wall as the words: "Permission to narrate". Borrowed from the work of Edward Said, the notion of requiring a 'permission to narrate' alludes to the dominance of media and academic stereotypes surrounding Islam, the Arabs and all that is foreign, quixotic and unfamiliar. This work questions the discourse that establishes Islam as an entity inimical and hostile to Western "civilization". Underlying this is the assumption that such "civilizations" are monolithic and homogenous, and furthermore, that Islam or Muslim societies cannot be "modern". Ahmed's work undermines the established binaries ("us and them") upon which personal, social and national identities have been forged. Dance, which is organic to every culture, is essentially an expression of the right to exist. Ahmed's work fuses Islam and hip hop to create a jarring of high and low cultural forms that address and overturn discourses surrounding representations of the other. Ahmed does not attempt to speak on behalf of Muslim peoples, but rather, she draws attention to the power inherent in knowledge and to the way such power is wielded for ideological national and international ends. "Permission to narrate" does not offer the alternative narrative, but rather, it highlights the importance of creating a space in which other voices and narratives may be heard.
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