Muslim artist Sarah Maple kicks up a storm with new show

Move over Tracey Emin. Twenty-four-year-old newcomer Sarah Maple has created a real sensation by exhibiting a number of paintings of veiled Muslims, including a bare-breasted woman partially clad in a burqa (pictured, with Maple right). The gallery where the works are being shown, the SaLon Gallery in west London, has had its windows smashed and the gallery is now under round-the-clock police surveillance after receiving threatening and abusive calls.

The solo exhibition of paintings by Maple, who is a Muslim herself, includes a veiled woman holding a pig, which is interpreted as a flagrant disregard of the Islamic ban on eating pork. The show – entitled This Artist Blows – also includes two self-portraits: one of Maple wearing a headscarf has an image of Kate Moss's naked breast attached to it; another shows Maple in a T-shirt bearing the slogan "I love jihad". In another, a veiled Muslim woman wears a badge that says "I love orgasms".

Maple, who is of Kenyan and British parentage, defended her work, claiming she did not set out to cause offence but to explore her Britishness and her Muslim faith. She said: "I do think some people have just reacted to my work without thinking about the concepts behind it. I'm a practising Muslim and initially, when I started making the work, it was really personal, about my background with my father being British and my mother who is a Muslim and how I felt growing up. I was exploring the question of fusing those two together and whether it could be done."