Veiled Bodies, Unveiled Voices: Aesthetic and Political Resistances in Women's Creative Expression in the Maghreb

Abstract

In Maghrebi and Oriental cultures, the female body is traditionally shaped by rituals, domestic practices, and sacred codes embodied in silence and fabric — the haïk, the hammam, the posture of modesty. This article explores how contemporary women artists—filmmakers, writers, visual creators—reclaim this culturally inscribed body and transform it into a space of memory, resistance, and expression. Through an interdisciplinary reading of films (Sofia, Adam, Beauty and the Dogs), literary works (Djebar, Mernissi, Madani), and visual pieces (Essaydi, Khattari, Hajjaj), the study highlights new aesthetic strategies that emerge from within tradition. Veiling, food preparation, female sorority, and bodily calligraphy become tools of subversion. Drawing on feminist theories of the gaze, performativity, and embodied memory, the article reveals how these works articulate alternative ways of seeing and being. The female body becomes a palimpsest of rituals, an archive of resistance, and a poetic site of rewriting.