This is an Art Fund initiative for the British Museum and V&A and the broad aim is to create a world-class capsule collection of major names and emerging talents in photography from the Middle East (whether living in the region or in diaspora), from 1900 to today. The Art Fund has given the two museums grants over £150,000 for the collection and additional support for the tour of the collection. Raeda Saadeh uses photography, video, performance and installations to explore issues of Palestinian identity, often focusing specifically on gender. In this highly staged self-portrait, the artist represents herself as an odalisque with a political twist. Rather than posing as one of the passive, sexually available women that recur in Orientalist art, she gazes directly at the viewer, her body encased in Palestinian newspapers.