The Wind in her veil

This work presents a looping video of a woman in a black burqa riding an electric scooter through an open sky, gently humming “Stand by Me.” The image is deliberately quiet, almost weightless—an everyday action displaced into an impossible space. Displayed through CCTV monitors mounted on outdated television brackets, the work adopts the visual language of surveillance, where bodies are continuously seen yet rarely understood.

The piece originates from a simple observation: in Australia, women riding electric scooters pass almost unnoticed, absorbed into the rhythm of daily life. Their movement is familiar, unremarkable, nearly invisible. But what happens when that same figure is marked differently—when she wears a burqa or hijab? Does she remain part of the background, or does she become hyper-visible, scrutinised, and set apart?

By shifting the setting from the street to the sky, the work removes the subject from any fixed geography while amplifying the act of looking. The floating figure resists placement, yet cannot escape the gaze. The use of CCTV further complicates this dynamic, suggesting a system where visibility is constant, but neutrality is an illusion.

The work reflects on how public perception is not neutral but constructed—shaped by cultural expectations, political climates, and inherited ways of seeing. Visibility, in this context, is unstable: to be unseen can suggest belonging, while to be seen can imply difference.