You will see this image in the exhibition. This Iranian teahouse is exclusively for men. The guests are talking, drinking tea and coffee, smoking waterpipes and listening to a professional storyteller, who is standing in the middle.
Are there places you may or may not be welcome? How about the football stadium, the yoga school and the toilets, out on the street or in rooms in your home? In addition to your position in society, your wealth or knowledge, gender determines where you’re allowed to be, or more figuratively, the space that you take or are given.
The exhibition will ask you the question:
Gender without borders?
Tea house for men
Behind the screens
This mashrabiya which you will see in the exhibition is a kind of frame or screen that is common in the Arab world. The women sitting behind it can look through the screen but are themselves concealed from the outside world.
Photo credit: Egypt; c. 1960
