From the Algerian War for Independence, to the ongoing Palestinian Intifada, women’s bodies have been used in armed conflict, to transport weapons, distract enemies and even make the ultimate sacrifice. While women’s bodies are used to secure success in these insurgencies, historically this does not ensure their elevation of economic or social status within the very societies they struggle to liberate.

STRIPPED/STRAPPED examines the positions of women within liberation ideologies. By exercising agency in liberation struggles, women are often able to assume conventional positions of power for the first time, within the confines of restrictive ideologies. How is it that this action often results in further victimization? How can women, themselves subordinate within oppressed and marginalized societies, participate in their own freedom?

In STRIPPED/STRAPPED, the act of stripping off various markers of cultural identity is an attempt at personal freedom. STRIPPED/STRAPPED attempts to push freedom a step further, beyond ideologies that bind, employing the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house, into personal expressions as varied as bodies themselves. Is this attempt successful? What is it that prevents the woman from achieving total freedom? Are her attempts at self-revelation a new and viable model for all our freedom struggles?