The Islamic Arts Museum’s (IAMM) current exhibition, Faith and Power: Women in Islam, does not feature female artists or craftswomen, but celebrates the more sovereign aspects of womanhood. Its chief goal is to cancel today’s fallacies by presenting illustrious examples from the past: from the women of Islam’s nascent years, such as Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) first wife, Khadijah to our very own Cik Siti Wan Kembang, whose affinity for deer can be seen in one of the exhibition’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it artefacts, a miniscule seventeenth-century gold coin emblazoned with what is today’s symbol for Bank Negara.

Faith, or religious piety, makes up the first half of the exhibition. It is comparably smaller than the exhibition’s section on power, but highlights the equality women have with men in the eyes of God. If you can tear yourself away from the engulfing wall texts, do look out for the exquisite Dervish coco-de-mer bowl from seventeenth-century Iran. It bears intricate carving of two of the pillars of Islamic art -- calligraphy and floral motifs -- and is attributed to Sufism, as practiced by Rabi’ah al-Adawiyah. Also captivating is the large reproduction of a seventeenth-century drawing of the Queen of Sheba, who reclines languidly and in a position identical to Western art history’s most famous pin-up girl, Olympia. The original drawing is available for viewing at the British Museum, though the IAMM’s entrance fee is less traumatic than the cost of a return airfare to London.

Sections are brilliantly divided using ersatz screens, alluding to the dichotomy of gender and the screens in public and religious spaces that separate women from the male gaze; they also function like hijab, the shroud of female Muslim identity. Bronzework, textiles, glasswork and the IAMM’s signatory display, a reproduction of an interior space complete with wooden screen, are exhibited to illustrate the sociocultural context of the exhibition’s subjects.

Artworks aside, it must be said that examining an exhibition like this is potentially tricky. After all, it is deeply grounded in a subject, which in the years post-9/11, has taken on new significance. Unjustly, ‘Islamophobia’ has entered today’s international vernacular. Here is a smattering of events from the past decade alone clue us into how the religion is perceived today:

Men are deemed ‘suspicious’ for praying before a flight, for unkempt facial hair, and if their passport reveals a Muslim name. In 2004, Dutch filmmaker, Theo Van Gogh, is murdered for Submission, a short film criticizing Islamic attitudes towards women, whilst over in France, a law is passed banning items of conspicuous religious significance -- primarily headscarves -- in public schools. And, as British Foreign Secretary in 2006, Jack Straw publicly suggests that communication in his constituency would improve if women removed their full veils, or niqab.

Clearly, I read a lot in preparation for this exhibition -- all the better to appreciate the artworks, I figured, although there isn’t actually that much art on display at the IAMM’s exhibition and (most ironically) I found myself having to read even more. Biographical wall charts are what make up most of the exhibition. Arranged sequentially and by region, it is an exercise in charting the female genealogy of Islam and each subject is more luminous than the next. It felt like reading a continuous line of CVs -- you would certainly have trouble deciding who you’d like to rule your imaginary Islamic kingdom.

Indeed, the information is overwhelming, making the exhibition less memorable than it could be, for the comparably small showing of artefacts here competes for attention with the wall texts on female protagonists in Islam’s rich history. Not that this is an outright complaint -- this isn’t a subject that isn’t given much focus elsewhere. The most accessible source of information remains the Internet, which, as always, proves useful in excavating these overlooked chunks of history. So useful, in fact, that the IAMM’s write-up for the Queen of Sheba, known in Islam as Bilqis or Bilqas, reads very much like information found on the BBC’s history pages: the BBC’s webpage writes ‘her tale has been told and retold in many lands for nearly 3,000 years,’ whilst the IAMM states, ‘her tale has been told and retold -- especially in Africa and Arabia -- for over 1,000 years.’

Perhaps I am nitpicking, but the difference of two centuries does attract a large question mark on the subject of historical accuracy and curatorial integrity. It’s also testament to the power of Googling, which I suspect, will soon be every curator’s nightmare.

Nevertheless, an exhibition like this does feed into feminist (art) history, which is less developed in Malaysia. Also, there are more erroneous affairs in parliament and elsewhere, for example, across town at the National Art Gallery (NAG), where, coincidentally, women are also being lauded, though for completely different reasons. As part of the NAG’s commemorative exhibition, Susurmasa, a section is devoted especially to ravishing ‘Malayan Beauty’ where there is an abundance of artworks, mainly paintings. However, instead of listing artists or the history of portraiture in Malaysia, wall texts encourage viewers to gawk and drool over the many ‘visual delights’ on display. I shan’t reproduce the text here, but I encourage you to make the trip to view this contrast for yourself and to note the marked difference in depictions of womanhood barely 10km from each other. It is certainly reflective of the dualities and relativism present today and begs the question ‘who wears the veil now?’

The IAMM’s exhibition ends with a large world map with clusters of dots denoting members of the OIC and more CVs, this time of the modern protagonists that have succeeded in various fields. Politicians and royals dominate the group of examples, but where are the everyday women? These texts are meant to serve as the exhibition’s endnotes, thus artworks are absent altogether. Personally, I found these unnecessary and a little disappointing; I had visited to see rare artworks, learn of unsung heroines, and better understand a subject that has incredible relevance in today’s world -- not undergo a crash course of who’s who in the Islamic world.

Avoiding the more gritty issues pertaining to women and Islam makes this exhibition a little weaker than expected. Whilst I sense the subtlety of indirectly addressing these themes through the display and selection of artworks, what prevails more is the notion of exoticism -- an already nagging problem with depictions of women and the East, and, certainly against the IAMM’s hopes of challenging stereotypical projections of women.

Faith and Power: Women in Islam has big hopes of making amends for commonplace views of an oppressed group, but does so by screaming, ‘Look! We’re not oppressed because we have all these wonderful examples from the past and in the modern world!’ That there are many seminal examples whose various contributions have helped define the Islamic world is undeniable, but despite the riot of texts here, the story still seems incomplete. Until then, I suppose there’s always the Internet.

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Rachel Jenagaratnam is a free-lance writer.

The IAMM will be conducting a seminar on Faith and Power: Women in Islam. The tentative date for the seminar  is May 31, 2008. Do contact the museum directly for further details. The exhibition runs till July 4, 2008. For full event details, check out our event listing here.