The veil functions so powerfully in numerous religious contexts and inserts itself as an iconic object throughout history. From the Muslim hijab to the Christian wedding veil, this item has accompanied us, particularly women, through our socio-religious and socio-political histories predominantly as a shield, a function of concealment. The religious connotations are legion. One recalls the dark velvet curtain concealing the priest's confession box, the iconic shroud of Turin, the flowing, sculpted sensuality of Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, the erotic, barely concealing loincloth of Michelangelo's Pietà. The veil offers up other connotations of a darker tone such as sadomasochistic torture and the horific images from Abu Ghraib. The veil and its uses are contradictory. One moment it is an object of censor, the next a reflection of barely concealed eroticism; that attempt at concealment often (inadvertently or otherwise) functions as a focus of more intense observation. The power of the veil for me lies in its agency as a negotiator, an arbitrator of the scopophilic act; and in its interjection into the shifting power relations between the object and the subject, it serves as a visual expression of jouissance as articulated by Bataille, Cixous and Kristeva.