Obedience to Poetry, 2013, is a triptych created by Syrian artist Laila Muraywid, whose work addresses the challenges faced by women, particularly through the lens of her own experience as a Middle Eastern woman. Her work critiques rigid beauty norms and the societal and religious traditions that restrict women’s autonomy and choices. Through her art, she resists deeply embedded cultural and religious structures that objectify and control women, using the intimate and often exposed female form to confront these limitations and challenge taboos.
The triptych format of Obedience to Poetry — featuring three panels of a semi-nude woman in varying poses — lends the piece a religious overtone, albeit a critical one. Traditionally used in Christian altarpieces to convey narrative or progression, the triptych structure here underscores the work’s thematic journey through embodiment, objectification, and liberation.
The first panel explores embodiment. The model lies on her stomach, partially covered by a quilt, her back bare, her face turned toward two dolls. Muraywid emphasizes her subject’s soft skin, flowing hair, and graceful form. Through this prolonged artistic engagement, the artist ceases to see the model as separate and instead begins to identify with her, channeling a shared feminine experience through the act of creation.
The second panel addresses objectification. Here, the model leans forward, exposing her thigh, while her gaze turns to three eerie dolls, now partly cloaked in the previously discarded dress. Her posture suggests a moment of self-indulgence or introspection, while the dolls symbolize passive, dehumanized femininity — objects of the gaze. Muraywid uses the dolls to explore how women internalize external perceptions, particularly the ‘male gaze’. The piece reflects on how women are often forced to perform roles defined by patriarchal norms, alienating them from their authentic selves.
In the final panel, the model appears liberated. She reclines freely, throwing the dolls behind her and enveloping herself in a comforting quilt, her navel exposed — a symbol of rebirth. Her posture, with head tilted back and neck extended, suggests catharsis and relief. Her black hair flows outward like a shadow, evoking the symbolism of veiling. Hair, in Muraywid’s work, often stands in for the veil — a culturally loaded symbol in Middle Eastern contexts. Muraywid views veiling not as religious obligation, but as a politicized practice that once symbolized protection and now signifies repression. In this final image, the setting disintegrates into an undefined, dreamlike space. The bed dissolves, giving way to an abstract void — a metaphor for inner freedom and the imaginative realm where the artist, and by extension the woman, can exist unbound by external constraints.
