A Review on "Taja Gulina" Painting by Rebwar Saeed - Part 2

Ala Rezaei

Read the first part of this article here

However, ecofeminism is against this kind of belief. Ecofeminism tells us that the reason for the very large gap that has been created between nature and life is that this kind of belief and ideology separates men and women and makes men the creators of thoughts and intellect and women as a nature that must be cultivated thus enslaving them due to disregarding their capabilities. This has caused women to face too much harm and civilizations have been created that do not consider human rights properly thus everybody could live in a peaceful world and society.

Thus, the ecofeminists say that this deep gap between life and nature can only be filled with the natural female instinct and their awareness of their place in society and nature because women can totally understand that nature and themselves have faced oppression in the patriotic social system.

3. Ecofeminism believes that the oppression and enslavement opposed to women and nature have the same source and that is the patriarchy ideology so that men, as the intellectual and life creators, misuse them as brainless creatures that only have fertile bodies. Thus, women are the best people to protect nature because they can understand nature's problems since they are caused by the same source that has caused women's troubles and finally, they can be ecological movement leaders.

 Now, if we come back to the painting, we can find many ecofeminism subjects. First of all, we see a woman here who is the center of the painting and the most important topic of it. As I mentioned before, the artist has used most of the colors in the body of this woman and he also has painted her larger than any other part of the painting. So, here we can see that in contrast to the patriarchal beliefs, this woman has not let anybody or anything dominate her as a sole body and a close element to nature. Another important point that can be seen within this woman is that she is flying over her land and we see that this land is full of animals which can be a symbol of nature. Another thing that can be seen is that this woman is guarding her land from above with a part of her face that is painted green (green can mean nature here) and a part of her dress is also green which can indicate the close relationship of women to the nature and their similarities. Again, we can see ecofeminist symbols here because in this painting the woman has been chosen as the guardian of nature because woman and nature are similar and both of them despite their ability to create and give life to people and things have the same problem, too which comes from the same source of patriarchy that has oppressed them throughout the history because they had the ability for creation so they have been regarded as a tool. This is why women, more than any other creature, can understand nature's troubles and they are the best people to protect and guard nature. As it is illustrated in this painting we can see the woman in the painting, this woman is aware of herself and her nature; she flies over that nature so that she can guard it and she also covers herself with one of her hands in order to protect herself as a part of the nature.

3. The relationship between Socialism and Women

A very important point about this painting is its name which is called "Taja Gulina" (Flower Crown). The meaning of this name is the woman's land that she is wearing like a crown on her head.

What the artist has done here conveys very deep meaning and it can be interpreted that women are a very significant reason for their land; i.e., women are like a queen who wears their land like a crown on their head and when they proudly keep their heads up, their land will also rise high but if they feel ashamed and lower their head, their country, as their crown, will fall and fall apart. It can be said that the painter has shown a strong meaning for women here and we can relate to the philosophy of socialism versus women's position.

Socialism conveys how the individuals of the society should cooperate so that they can create a stronger and more developed society. Most of the nineteenth and twentieth-century philosophers such as "Carl Marx" and "Simone de Beauvoir" agreed on this point that creating a strong society without women's involvement who are half the population of that society and without benefiting from their abilities is not possible. Carl Marx, one of the nineteenth-century philosophers and one of the most influential ones discusses that people will never be able to develop in their society until they do not ask the female gender to help them out in his socialism philosophy. At first, the twentieth-century great philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir, thought that if a socialist society in which everyone is attempting to gain success and they try to develop is created then it would not be necessary to fight for women's rights because in such a society everything is in its right place and the human right is well protected.

However, de Beauvoir regretted this idea of herself later and years later in an interview said that until we do not fight for women and the women do not learn that they should fight for their own rights we never will be able to create a socialist society in which human right is protected and the society is developing. This is because at first the female part of the society needs to remember their rights and strengths and try to gain them, then this strength will be applied to help the society and the humans to make their society a more developed country.

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