Mahshad Hosseini | The Worshipers 2023

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Mahshad Hosseini, "The Worshipers," 2023

Courtesy of the Gallery.

Architecturally, Mosques, like other spaces of worship, separate the inside from the outside world to give focus on the internal. Islam’s long history of separating women from men during prayer has been influenced by various interpretations of religious texts and scholarly opinions. Separate, gender specific prayer spaces in Mosques can range from completely independent rooms to designated sections within larger, otherwise open, praying areas. Also, in Islam, modesty is emphasized as an important principle for maintaining appropriate relatonships between women and men. It is thought that these separate spaces encourage and physically enforce worshipers to concentrate on their prayers and to avoid unnecessary distraction.

This practice has a variety of feminist perspectives. Separating women and men this way represents and perpetuates the notion that women are inferior to men. To cast light on women’s access to religious spaces and tradition-bound roles within the community, The Worshipers project challenges patriarchal norms and promotes gender equality within religious spaces and society at large. The photographs in this showcase form a small part of my larger documentary project, The Worshipers, that untl now involves photographing worshipers of Islam in Toronto, Calgary and in Iran. This work is supported by a Roloff Beny Foundation Graduate Award in Photographic Art, and by the Department of Art, University of Lethbridge.