1. Lalla Essaydi Les Femmes du Moroc Clarita y Efraim PPS
Reclining Odalisque
ENGLISH
Clarita y Efraim
PPS

2. Les Femmes du Moroc: Dancer Triptych
In Les Femmes du Maroc, Lalla Essaydi revisits her past. She was born in Morocco and lived in Saudi Arabia for many years before moving to Boston, where she received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in In these recent photographs, which are blown up to large scale, Essaydi addresses the lives and identities of women in Islamic societies. Her perspective, shaped by personal experience in both Arabic and Western societies, is sensitive and insightful. She fuses intimate portrait photography with Islamic calligraphy in a distinctive style that employs compositional structures derived from 19th-Century Orientalist painting. The depictions of harem scenes by Delacroix, Ingres and Matisse come to mind, as well as Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, whose work has long focused on women’s social, political and psychological experiences in contemporary Islamic societies.
Les Femmes du Moroc: Dancer Triptych

3. However, Essaydi has her own clear voice
However, Essaydi has her own clear voice. Her subject is not new, but her treatment is convincing, tranquil and elegant. Her palette is minimal. Nuances of crème and henna are dominant, with only the dark eyes of the women adding the occasional dramatic contrast. Meanwhile, calligraphy weaves through the pictures like knots of yarn in a carpet, covering bodies, gowns and backgrounds alike. Here, language provides visual texture and rhythm, its traditional implications superseded by a strong contemporary aesthetic. It is this stylistic simplicity that prevents Essaydi’s work from slipping into ornamentation.
Harem #14C, 2009

4. Nevertheless, historic associations are close at hand, such as the famous Aleppo room (16th Century, Syria) now in the collection of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The room, built by a rich merchant, is known for the Arabic verses that cover every inch of its architectural space. Whereas in this case, the calligraphy describes the owner’s wealth and piety, in Essaydi it is less spiritual than existential: it illustrates her sitter’s disguised identity.
Aleppo Room

5. Chromogenic print mounted to aluminum, ed. 10, 60" x 48"
Les Femmes du Maroc #41, 2006
Chromogenic print mounted to aluminum, ed. 10, 60" x 48"

6. Chromogenic print mounted to aluminum, 30" x 40"
Les Femmes du Maroc: #53, 2006
Chromogenic print mounted to aluminum, 30" x 40"

7. Les Femmes du Moroc: Revisited 5
Les Femmes du Maroc is set within an unoccupied house, owned by the artist’s family, where Essaydi was sent as a punishment for childhood disobedience. With this in mind, one cannot help but think of these interiors as a land of bad dreams. In her work, Essaydi has discussed the customs in Muslim countries that confine women to private spaces, such as the home, while men expand into the public domain. For the women, imagination becomes the only refuge. These images remind me of the poet Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s lyrics from 1842, which in 1848 would express the spirit of the German March Revolution. The beginning goes: “Thoughts are free who could guess them? They fly by like nightly shadows. No human can know them, no hunter can shoot them…”
Les Femmes du Moroc: Revisited 5

9. Les Femmes du Maroc: Harem Women Writing, 2008

10. Les Femmes du Moroc: Harem Beauty 1
By employing calligraphy, an Islamic art form reserved exclusively for men, Essaydi empowers her subjects as well as liberates them from traditional restrictions. Her women are strong and forever mysterious, since society’s strictures circumscribe most forms of contact. Their expressions are subtle, well measured and never provocative. Their white burkas, covered with calligraphed words, seem to fuse with the background. The women become one with the thoughts that surround them, as if their secrets and spirit have themselves become illustrations of their surroundings. Yet they cannot avoid the misfortune of possessing no outlet of expression, of being fated to perpetual silence. This voicelessness, contrasted with such a wealth of words, is at the core of the complexity of Arab female identity and a true tragedy for any human being.
Les Femmes du Moroc: Harem Beauty 1

11. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - La Grande Odalisque (1814),
Work
Influenced by her experiences growing up in Morocco and Saudi Arabia, Essaydi explores the ways that gender and power are inscribed on Muslim women's bodies and the spaces they inhabit. She has stated that her work is autobiographical[8] and that she was inspired by the differences she perceived in women's lives in the United States versus in Morocco, in terms of freedom and identity.[9] She explores a wide range of perspectives, including issues of diaspora, identity, and expected location through her studio practice in Boston.[10] She also looks at the ways of viewing reality while questioning limits of other cultures and challenging Orientalist art, engaging tradition, history, art and technology. Her Grand Odalisque from the series 'Les Femmes du Maroc' (2008), for example, cites the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' painting La Grande Odalisque (1814), although her model is dressed.[11] She also presents the resistance of stereotypes maintained by Western and Eastern societies.The inspiration for many of her works came from her childhood, in the physical space where she, as a young woman, was sent when she disobeyed. She stepped outside the permissible behavioral space, as defined by Moroccan culture.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - La Grande Odalisque (1814),

12. Les Femmes du Moroc: Grande Odalisque 2

13. Les Femmes du Moroc: Revisited 9

14. Les Femmes du Moroc: Revisited 4

15. Les Femmes du Moroc: Revisited 1

16. Les Femmes du Maroc #19, 2005

17. Les Femmes du Maroc #26, 2006

18. Les Femmes du Maroc #27b, 2006

19. Les Femmes du Moroc: Moorish Woman

20. Les Femmes du Maroc #1, 2005

21. Les Femmes du Moroc: Outdoor Gossip

22. Les Femmes du Moroc: Harem Woman 1

23. Les Femmes du Maroc #30, 2006

24. Les Femmes du Maroc #52, 2006

25. Les Femmes du Maroc 2005

26. Clarita-Efraim pps: Sources:
s/lalla-essaydi-les-femmes-du-maroc
Essaydi’s powerful photos on exhibit at San Diego Museum
Clarita-Efraim pps:
December 2019