I spent my childhood in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates. Remembering those times brings to mind spatial images of thresholds and boundaries. I am there, in those scenes, engaged in tracing the edges of surfacescarpets, dresses, walls, floors. In the Middle East, the term 'purdah' describes the cultural practice of separating and hiding women, through clothing and architecture -veils, screens and walls -from the public gaze. The particular manifestation of this gendering of space varies depending on location. For example, in Afghanistan, under the Taliban, in public women were required to wear a burqa, in this case a loose garment, usually sky blue, that covered them from head to foot. Only their eyes could be seen (the rims outlined, but perhaps only in a Westerner's imagination, with black kohl) looking out through the window of an embroidered screen. For An Embellishment: Purdah, as part of the 'Spatial Imagination' exhibition at the Domo Baal Gallery in London in January 2006, 1 I repeatedly wrote the word 'purdah' in black kohl on a west-facing window in the script of Afghanistan's official languages -Dari and Pashto. By day or by night, from inside the gallery or from outside on the street, the work changed according to the viewer's position -transparent/opaque, concealing/revealing -the embellishment, or decorative covering, invited the viewer to imagine beyond the places he or she could see.