Paradise Bath (2009) is a set of 9 photographs, and an outcome of a performance I did during my visit to Thessaloniki, Greece. I was immediately drawn to the first Ottoman bath-house built there in 1444. Known as Bey Hammam or Paradise Bath, it stands in the city center as one of the main tourist destinations, as well as a symbol of the country’s Muslim past. This work takes the archetypal Orientalist image of a bath-scene to highlight issues of race, memory and power while referencing the ritual of washing/cleansing — symbolic in Islam and associated with regaining purity.
