Photograph, Al-Kouture: Chanel #VII from the series Al-Kouture

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as part of Contemporary Muslim Fashions.

Born in Iraq, photographer Wesaam Al-Badry and his family fled their home country for a Saudi Arabian refugee camp at the beginning of the Gulf War before relocating to Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1994. His work is often inspired by the disconnect he felt between his experiences in the Middle East and Middle America. In the series Al-Kouture, he refashions silk scarves by prominent European brands into niqabs. As he explains, “Al-Kouture . . . reveals the tension between . . . Western consumerism and its influence on the traditional Muslim culture. [It] plays with symbolism and the impact of globalization and explores the possibilities of assimilation in a vast polarized world.”

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Contemporary Muslim Fashions.