Maker(s): | Butt, Ambreen
| Culture: | Pakistani, active in United States (1969- )
| Title: | Untitled from 'Daughters of the East' series
| Date Made: | 2008
| Type: | Print
| Materials: | six plate color etching, aquatint, and spit-bite aquatint with chine collé; edition 21/30
| Measurements: | Sheet: 25 in x 19 in; 63.5 cm x 48.3 cm; Plate: 18 in x 12 7/8 in; 45.7 cm x 32.7 cm
| Accession Number: | AC 2011.14
| Credit Line: | Purchase, Trinkett Clark Memorial Student Acquisition Fund
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Label Text: Following the events of September 11, 2001, Butt's art (already influenced by her identity as a Pakistani Muslim) became increasingly personal. The series Daughters of the East continues a recurring theme, in which Butt re-defines women's present-day roles and celebrates their courage, strength, and heroism. Created in the wake of the 2007 assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a sense of struggle and anguish permeates the fragile designs.
In Untitled, Butt used a succession of printing plates to create an intricate, layered pattern of pistols that seem to gain momentum and begin to move across the background. In the center, a woman kneels and bends, her burqa coalescing into a flying dragon, perhaps a symbol of her strength of character in the face of danger and violence.
Written by Siyu Shen, Class of 2015
Tags: women; dragons; burkas; patterns; symbolism; ancestors; generations Link to share this object record: https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2011.14 |