This hi-tech mask start to develop its own AI-generated language, based on the feminist text by Gayatri Spivak blinking out their message in a Morse code.
It is Inspired by the intriguing historical masks worn by the Bandari women from Southern Iran. The legend has it that these masks were developed during Portuguese colonial rule, as a way of protecting the wearer from the gaze of slave masters looking for pretty women.
Viewed from a contemporary perspective, they can be seen as a means of protecting women from patriarchal colonial oppression? Asks herself the artist. As stated by the artist, the project relies also on the seminal article “Can the Subaltern Speak?” by feminist theorist, Gayatri Spivak, asks whether it might be possible for the colonized – the subaltern – to have a voice in the face of colonial oppression.
More work of Behnaz Farahi can be found on her website: https://behnazfarahi.com/
About Behnaz Farah exhibition at MIT, you can also read this review: