Paradise Bath (2009) is a set of 9 photographs, and an outcome of a performance Hamra Abbas did during her visit to Thessaloniki, Greece.
She 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.
Model : Angeliki Pardalidou
