The ancient cultural heritage of the headscarf is varies and comples. Yet it is only a simple piece of fabric wrapped around the head of a person. The headscarf has been worn in a variety of ways since the beginning of human thought. It serves as protection, jewelry, status symbol. The term "headscarf" is today quickly linked to the headscarf of Muslim women. Associations such as oppression, Islamism and the resulting anxiety emerge. What is behind this piece of fabric?
In my headscarf pictures, the headscarf is torn out of its context. There are headscarves, in the absence of a head. The cloth, which surrounds the absent, becomes a sculpture, which gives the missing face a sort of outline. The observer's imagination seeks the face of the being to give it an identity. The headscarf and the associated religious, social and political connotations direct the search for the being. On the other hand, there is the detached beauty of the cloth, which, by virtue of its purity, strips off the proposed cultural connections and makes them superfluous.

The power attributed to the headscarf is questioned. It is not the headscarf that disturbs, but the stranger. It is not a question of what the headscarf is, but what reveals it about us, our prejudices, our fears.

Through the poetry of Eliane Zinner’s provocative works, she seeks to remove the viewer from their reality for a moment and asks them to queston their own identity politics by stimulating self-reflection.The work of the headscarf opens up various possibilities of identification in the viewer and brings one into contact with ones own depths.

Portfolio Entries

“The blue headscarf ”