Lalla Essaydi plays with words. And silence.
Though her work speaks volumes, it leaves me speechless.
She combines the art of "women's" henna with what she calls the "masculine" art of Arabic calligraphy in a process that can take weeks to realize, while the artist and her helpers work ceaselessly, applying the henna to fabric, walls, body...
You can "read" her work in so many ways...Words thought but left unsaid, words unspoken but visible to all, women's multi-layered meanings. Outspokeness in societies, both Western and Islamic, that have often silenced women.
I feel Essaydi is examining her self and her culture(s), prism-like through her photography and art - she portrays the stereotype of the silent, veiled Arab woman, the strong-spirited woman, the languid odalisque of Western fantasy, the multi-generational ties between women; images that break and uphold convention. I think her work is magnificent.
All the more so when you understand how much of it is "performance" art in collaboration with those in the frame. The setting is equally intriguing. Essaydi says the house in Morocco where she creates her art and photographs belongs to her family.
"Until fairly recently, my work was preoccupied with this physical space, for it is to here, to this house, that a young woman was sent when she disobeyed, stepped outside the permissible space.
Accompanied by servants, but spoken to by no one, she would spend a month here alone.
Thus the house is both a literal and a psychological space, a space marked by memory." - LS Converging Territories
Her latest book of art photography, Les femmes du Maroc, is a collaboration with noted (and dear to my heart) Moroccan feminist and sociologist Fatema Mernissi. Just based on some of the images I've seen, I find it even more challenging of orientalist depictions of women, with images imbued with both serenity and confrontation.
I can only await patiently until I get my hands on a copy and am able to devour Essaydi and Mernissi's words with my own eyes.
Marakesh Xanthe also has a lovely post on the artist and her work.
All images copyright Lalla Essaydi.
