"Tempting Eyes began during a period when women in Saudi Arabia were still prohibited from driving. At the same time, the so-called “Tempting Eyes” law restricted women's visibility, treating their eyes—the part of the body often left visible beneath the veil—as potentially provocative.

These restrictions became the starting point for a series examining the ways women's bodies, movement, visibility, and choices can be controlled through laws and social expectations. The forms of the works are inspired by rear-view car mirrors, connecting restrictions on women's movement with the act of looking, being watched, and being seen.

When the ban on women driving was lifted in June 2018, I traveled to Saudi Arabia and drove a car belonging to my activist friend, who had herself been arrested for driving. Although the ban had been lifted, some of the women activists who had fought for this right remained behind bars and could not experience that freedom. I felt compelled to drive on their behalf. I documented the experience on video, turning an ordinary act of driving into a personal gesture of solidarity and a reflection on the complicated relationship between legal change and lived freedom.

In some works, I paint a bruise around the eye, bringing attention to another form of violence that can remain hidden behind the veil: domestic violence. The eye becomes both a site of control and a witness to what may remain unseen.

Tempting Eyes is ultimately not only about specific laws or one country. It questions the absurdity and violence of systems that regulate women's bodies, movement, visibility, and autonomy. The series asks what happens when something as ordinary as seeing, being seen, or driving becomes an act that requires permission—and what it means when women begin to reclaim those ordinary acts for themselves."

-Humaira Abid