In a Parallel Universe

By Anna Zakhary - December 02, 2021

While I was researching for my blogpost about sexualization of women, I stumbled across an artist, Eli Rezkallah, who has done remarkable work about this very thing. Rezkallah was born in Lebanon during the country’s civil war. He grew up in a neighborhood that stayed sheltered from the conflict, where he observed the women create an alternate reality that was detached from the conflict and yet still felt melancholy. When he began creating art, he used this theme of women using denial as a coping mechanism and not processing their emotions in much of his work.

He began his career as a fashion show producer but then became a visual artist and launched Plastik Studios and Plastic Magazine as creative visual arts outlets. He said that his biggest motivator was adding color to the world, because surrounding himself with beauty is what got him through the grimness of the war, so in his art he tries to counter those feelings. Plastik Magazine was also the Middle East’s first visual arts magazine and showcases his own work as well as the work of other LGBTQ+ and emerging artists.

One of the series he was very well known for was his “In a Parallel Universe” series. He conceived the idea for the series when he was with his extended family for Thanksgiving in New Jersey. His uncles were talking about how women are “better off cooking, taking care of the kitchen, and fulfilling ‘their womanly duties’.” Rezkallah said he was surprised to hear that some men genuinely still think like that, so he imagined a parallel universe. He said, “I went on to imagine a parallel universe, where roles are inverted and men are given a taste of their own sexist poison.”

He took advertisements from the 50s and 60s from all kinds of companies such as Hardee’s, Van Heusen, Chase & Sanborn, and more, and reimagined if the roles were reversed for the ads. Some of these ads showed men hitting women, stepping on women, serving men, cooking, cleaning, and generally discrediting women’s strength and intellect. His work showed women doing these same things to men rather than the other way. His hope for this project was that “people who are stuck in stereotypical gender roles imposed by patriarchal societies would be able to visually see the cracks in the limitation that those roles.”

I think he does an absolutely excellent job of this, and I wanted more people to see some of this series because it a truly remarkable piece of conceptual art. The following are some of his pieces from this particular series, and more of his work can be found at http://www.elirezkallah.com/photography.