Reversing the Domestic Gaze: Chaza Charafeddine’s Maidames Exhibition in Beirut

Abstract

Lebanese human rights activists see the Kafala system as a staggering social problem, which many have likened to a system of slavery. Currently supported by the Ministry of Labor, migrant workers are required to have a host-country sponsor, who is responsible for maintaining their legal status and controlling their mobility. The institution leaves a growing community of migrant workers, mostly women employed in domestic service, with no legal rights to escape abusive employers and poor working conditions, rendering them vulnerable to sexual, verbal, and physical abuse on a daily basis.

Between October 11 and November 10, 2018, the Beirut-based contemporary artist Chaza Charafeddine (b. 1964) sought to destabilize the power dynamics between migrant domestic workers and their employers in Maidames, a series of twenty 55 × 80 cm photo-portraits, printed with archival ink on special photo paper and framed with UV filter glass, exhibited at the Agial Gallery in...