On Oct. 21 and 22, Anida Yoeu Ali took walks around Hartford and West Hartford. The Cambodian-American performance artist wore a sparkly red chador, the body-concealing garment Muslim women wear. She said nothing. When Ali is The Red Chador, she does not speak.
Some onlookers were nice and inquisitive. Some did double takes and then walked away. Some whipped out cellphones to take pictures. Two men in particular were memorable to Ali. She met them at the bus stop in front of the Center Church on Gold Street in Hartford.
“One man was curious and friendly. He wanted me to say something.” Ali said. “This other man went nuts. He was loud, he yelled. He said ‘this is all just shock value, you don’t need to react to it’.” Ironically, he reacted strongly by insisting nobody needed to react.
Ali was followed by a documentary crew, making photos and videos of her encounters. Some of those photos and videos, including a photo of the two men, are now on exhibit at Trinity College in Hartford, where Ali is a visiting professor of International Studies.
Ali’s performance art centers on the use of garments and textiles, especially those with a religious aesthetic. The professor, a Muslim, said she is exploring attitudes toward Muslims during what she called “the most Islamophobic period in the history of the world.”
“This is a time when presidential candidates can make extremely Islamophobic comments and not be challenged or criticized, and even be applauded for it,” said Ali, who lives in West Hartford with her husband and three daughters. “The entire world is currently engaged in this conversation, ‘What are the Muslims doing to us?’
“This generation is inundated with images presenting Islam in an extremely Islamophobic way. It’s important to engage the audience and address those issues,” she added. “With a chador or a burqa, huge concepts come up. It’s the global image of Muslim women. It’s a very repressive image. But that’s not the case for women who choose to wear it.”
So Ali puts on the chador, which she makes bright red and sparkly to push her presentation to the extreme and make herself impossible to ignore. And she walks, sometimes with her face exposed, sometimes covered, burqa-style.
Ali’s first chador walk took place in Paris last April. Her Hartford-West Hartford trek is her second. She strolled the Trinity campus on Oct. 21 and in public in Hartford and West Hartford on Oct. 22. Trinity art Prof. Pablo Delano helped her choose places to walk and was part of her documentary crew.
“When she did the performance at Trinity, the reactions were more varied, ranging from fascination to scorn to real fear,” Delano said. “In the one situation on campus that the red chador provoked strong fear, members of the [documentary] team intervened.”
The idea, Delano said, was to provoke thought and discussion, not to scare people for the sake of scaring people.
One photo shows Ali crouching face-down in the parking lot behind the Colt building, whose distinctive dome gives it the look of a mosque. “She sees a dome and thinks it’s a mosque and starts to pray on the asphalt,” said Ali, referring to The Red Chador in the third person. “I feel that this building is very representative of Hartford. It’s an abandoned factory, and yet it’s under construction.”
Another shows Ali on the athletic field at Trinity, standing in front of a scoreboard and an American flag pointing downward. “The board says ‘home’ and ‘visitor.'” She said. “There are so many loaded metaphors there.”
In another, Ali stands in the center aisle of the otherwise empty chapel at Trinity, her hands clasped together in prayer, close to her face, in the style of a Buddhist. She likes the complexities of hybrid religious motifs and has lived that complexity herself. “I feel more Muslim than I feel Cambodian,” she said, referring to her home country, where 96 percent of the population is Buddhist.
The most important goal of her performance art is to inspire questions in the people she encounters. “I want them to ask ‘What is she?’ ‘Who is she?’ ‘What is it?’ ‘Why is this happening?'” she said. “They don’t know. That’s the point.”
“THE RED CHADOR” will be at Widener Gallery at the Austin Arts Center at Trinity College, 300 Summit St. in Hartford, through Dec. 14. Gallery hours are Sunday to Friday 1 to 6 p.m. anidaali.com.
