Artists Reflect 25 Years After 9/11 And War On Terror

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Twenty-five years after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, artists from Muslim, South Asian, and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) communities are sharing their personal and artistic reflections on how the day and its aftermath shaped their lives. The period following 9/11 was marked by grief, rebuilding efforts, and a rapid rise in Islamophobia and surveillance, which significantly altered the world.

Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal recalled that the sense of security Americans had previously taken for granted quickly disappeared. He is one of several artists whose lives were profoundly impacted by the United States' use of the attacks to pass the PATRIOT Act and justify invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bilal reflected on the immediate aftermath:“When the second plane hit, I knew this was no accident, and I sensed at once that the comfort and security Americans had long taken for granted were gone. The images were not new to me. I had lived through the Iran–Iraq War, Desert Storm, and years in a conflict zone, and what I saw on the screen brought back memories I knew too well. My first instinct was to call hospitals and ask where I could donate blood. My deepest empathy was with the victims and their families, but as soon as it became clear who was behind the attacks, I knew a backlash against Muslim and Arab communities would follow. And it did. Walking through downtown Chicago, I was called 'Bin Laden.' Middle Easterners were afraid, and Muslim women feared going out with hijab. I hoped the United States would respond by taking the moral high ground rather than letting fear determine its course. That did not happen. Our political leaders used 9/11 to justify multiple wars, including the invasion of Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the attacks. In 2004, during the Iraq War, I lost my brother Haji. The architects of those wars fell into the very trap the attackers had set: allowing violence to breed more violence, fear to breed more fear, and division to deepen at precisely the moment another path might have been possible.”

Artist Shahzia Sikander addressed the increased scrutiny of Muslim and South Asian individuals post-9/11. She noted that the image of the“Muslim woman” became an alibi for war. Sikander responded with her 2001 work,“Pleasure Pillars.” She explained that its central head, a composite of feminist thinkers and poets adorned with ram's horns, embodies pleasure, sensuality, and confidence, countering paternalistic depictions of Muslim women as fragile or in need of rescue. This head is positioned above torsos of Venus and Devata, and dancers from Mughal and Rajput miniatures, emphasizing the endurance of these visual traditions and the women who uphold them. Sikander later incorporated a fighter jet into the piece, symbolizing not just war, but the convergence of temporalities, including South Asian and Persianate visual culture, diasporic movement, gendered mythologies, and the persistent reality of imperial violence. As Gayatri Gopinath wrote, the work's“bodies stay fractured, composite, illegible, its histories spiraling and overlapping rather than moving in a straight line,” reflecting what Gopinath calls“the promiscuous intimacies of our shared pasts and presents.”

We previously reported:

Former President George W. Bush has unveiled 16 new paintings titled“Remembering 9/11” at his Dallas presidential center, marking the 25th anniversary.

Source: Hyperallergic

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