Arab Domains, Jacqueline Hassink's photography

Jacqueline Hassink Arab Domains

Elham M. Zeadat, General Manager and Owner of BLOOM Dead Sea Gift Enterprise. Amman, Jordan, 11 February 2005.

Maha Khaled Al-Ghunaim, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Global Investment House. Kuwait City, Kuwait, 22 May 2005.

Hosna Mohamed Rachid, Chairman, Rachid Mashreq Group. Alexandria, Egypt. 20 September 2006 (left), 21 September 2006 (right).

Fatma Mohamed Hqaiq, Owner, Founder and Marketing & Sales Manager, Tripoli International Scientific Booksho. Tripoli, Libya. 23 September 2006 (left), 24 September 2006 (right).

Jihad Anis Hassan Abbas, Director, Business Development Consolidated Contractors Company S.A.L. Sana’a, Yemen, 15 April 2006.

Her Excellency Lujaina Mohsin Darwish, Joint Deputy Managing Director, Mohsin Haider Darwish LLC. Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, 13 April 2006.

Hessa Abdul Rahman Al-Oun, Chairman of 5 companies; a.o. Al-bidaia Company for Trading & Industry and the First Female Industrial City Center. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 9 November 2005 (left), 11 November 2005 (right).

Mouna Bassaleh, Owner and President of Multipharma Scientific Office. Damascus, Syria, 14 February 2005.

Widad Yagoub Ibrahim, Vice Chairperson and Managing Director Bee Petroleum Company. Khartoum, Sudan, 26 May 2005 (left), 28 May 2005 (right).

Artist's Statement

In the project Female Power Stations: Queen Bees (1996-98) I try to map the world of economic power by observing and registering the position of women on the Executive Committee of corporations listed on the 1997 edition of Fortune’s Global 500. Throughout the project I found 51 female Executive Committee members who represent about 1% of all the Executive Committee members on the list. They were located in the United States (33 women), the United Kingdom (6 women), France (4 women), Japan (3 women), Canada (2 women), Spain (1 woman), Germany (1 woman) and Switzerland (1 woman).

In the period of December 1996 until June 1998 I ‘portrayed’ 14 of these female top managers by photographing their meeting table at the headquarters and their dining table at home. Of these 14 women there were two with drawals (January 8, 1998 and May 6, 1998). Three women joined the project without showingat the dinner table for personal reasons and 31 female top managers didn’t want to join the project.

The photographed meeting table at the headquarters is the table they use for meetings of the division which they are responsible for. The photographed dinner table at home is the table they normally use when they invite good friends or special guests for dinner. The female top managers were asked kindly to lay the table with their finest table cloth and their most beautiful crockery and tableware. This table represented the historic position of women in the past.

In 2001, Female Power Stations: Queen Bees was presented to Mrs. Al Kaylani, chairwoman of the London-based Arab International Women's Forum (AIWF). I proposed a similar project focusing on Arab women business leaders, and Mrs. Al Kaylani agreed to collaborate with me.

 

About the photographer

Born

Enschede, Netherlands

Nationality

Dutch

Based in

New York, United States

About Jacqueline Hassink

Following studies at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, Jacqueline Hassink graduated from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, in 1992, majoring in sculpture. Now based in New York, she creates global photo art projects that deal with the world of economic power. Her work represents visual, graphic and sociological maps of the axes of global economic structures. Her first art project, The Table of Power (1993-95), was followed by Banks (1995-96), Female Power Stations: Queen Bees (1996-98), Mindscapes (1998-2003), Car Girls (2002-08), Arab Domains (2005-06), Haute Couture Fitting Rooms, Paris (2003-10), View, Kyoto (2004-11) and The Table of Power 2 (2009-11).

Her work has been widely collected and exhibited, including shows at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Amador Gallery, New York, the International Center of Photography, New York, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Guangzhou Museum of Art. She is a visiting lecturer at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA and the International Center of Photography in New York. Hassink is an award winner of the Prix No Limit at Les Rencontres d’Arles.