The exhibition Lalla Essaydi: Photographs at the San Diego Museum of Art displays some of the images by the artist that demonstrate her most distinguished themes that have been shown in America, Europe and the Middle East. The photographs, on an indisputable visual level, picture two dominant and repeated elements: prevailing interior concepts and reproduced female characteristics. The patterns, colors, and text not only suggest but bluntly identify with Arab, and by default Islamic, settings. The spaces are essentially universally, or more specifically western, perceived stereotypes of Middle Eastern interiors: hamams, courtyards, and liwans. The collection of romantic images of the veiled women whose features are, at least for most non-Arabs, characteristic and representative of Islamic women from Morocco to Yemen: women with dark eyes, olive skin, long black hair, and short yet lean figures. 
The initial visual simplicity of expression involving women posed laying against doorways, walls, floors and benches is far more profound. Knowing a considerable more about Lalla Essaydi and the motives behind her photographs provide a deeper insight into the theme and, by default, further appreciation of the ‘exotic’ images. Art, in a certain sense, is a self portrait of an artist in various forms of media and expression. No art is simply random, it is produced with an incentive, an inspiration, an idea. In the case of Lalla, these images are a reflection of her past and present, a modern twist to the Arab women who is exposed to East and West.
The Moroccan born artist received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at TUFTS University and continued her career on the continent, represented by Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston and Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York City. She is also in a number of collections, including the Williams College of
Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Kodak Museum of Art. According to the Lalla, an artist can only truly move forward once the past is evaluated and represented. The choreographed and programmed setting are printed self portraits. The location is identified with her homeland, the text from her mother tongue, and the women are personalities of, so to speak, herself: confident, reflective, and strong.
The inclusion of Orientalism to the backdrops, females poses and positions, and painted calligraphy is the final twist to ‘getting’ the images. The Orientalist artists, initiating from the Renaissance, depicted the Middle and Near East by essentially inserting objects from the regions into their work to promote the richness of material and scientific trade between East and West. Later, the term was used by scholars to refer to ‘the study of the languages, literature, religions, thoughts, arts, and social life of the East in order to make them available to the West.’ (MacKenzie) In the late 1970s, through the impact of Edward Said, the term was completely altered from the study of the East to the Western interpretation of it. Said essentially gave Orientalism a bad rep in a phase of empowering Arabism, opening doors for Arabs to study Arabs and acknowledge the one sided Western dominion of how Eastern ideas and history was interpreted.
Lalla’s images are symbolic of Arab identity in relation to how the West formerly perceived Islamic women. While artists of the past, as exemplified by Eugene Delacroix, Les Femmes d'Alger (1834) , romanticized Arab women by isolating them in what was considered typical circumstances; Lalla changes the positioning. In Orientalist artworks, often times women were depicted with Western features in Eastern costume; which many have interpreted was due to the lack of physical contact with women of the East; and by default relying on hearsay stories and descriptions. They were also perceived as delicate and passive sector of society. Both of these qualities are transformed in the exhibited photographs. The women, though posed in Orientalist settings, have been empowered through their gaze and body language. Their eyes look directly at the viewer wrecking the fragility of past representations and their statuesque postures hold firm ground. Aggressive, secure, and forcefulness is Lalla’s Said response to the modern Arab women, breaking the continued view of the oppressed, isolated, and home-bound Islamic women.
The photographs are not based on traditional Eastern vernacular but one that reinterprets the Arab world through the point of view of a Westerner in order to reconstruct Islamic women of today. Though there are many aspects of the female life that remains faithful to tradition, as indicated by the conventional and historic settings in the photographs, Islamic women are coming out of the cocoon extended to them over years of cultural divides. The images therefore can be looked at as pretty compositions or something much much more; placed along the many works that intend to re-evaluate how Arab women are perceived in the West and providing the East grounds to do so; which, by default, is a part of the empowerment of women, on the scale of an exhibition.
The inclusion of Orientalism to the backdrops, females poses and positions, and painted calligraphy is the final twist to ‘getting’ the images. The Orientalist artists, initiating from the Renaissance, depicted the Middle and Near East by essentially inserting objects from the regions into their work to promote the richness of material and scientific trade between East and West. Later, the term was used by scholars to refer to ‘the study of the languages, literature, religions, thoughts, arts, and social life of the East in order to make them available to the West.’ (MacKenzie) In the late 1970s, through the impact of Edward Said, the term was completely altered from the study of the East to the Western interpretation of it. Said essentially gave Orientalism a bad rep in a phase of empowering Arabism, opening doors for Arabs to study Arabs and acknowledge the one sided Western dominion of how Eastern ideas and history was interpreted.
Lalla’s images are symbolic of Arab identity in relation to how the West formerly perceived Islamic women. While artists of the past, as exemplified by Eugene Delacroix, Les Femmes d'Alger (1834) , romanticized Arab women by isolating them in what was considered typical circumstances; Lalla changes the positioning. In Orientalist artworks, often times women were depicted with Western features in Eastern costume; which many have interpreted was due to the lack of physical contact with women of the East; and by default relying on hearsay stories and descriptions. They were also perceived as delicate and passive sector of society. Both of these qualities are transformed in the exhibited photographs. The women, though posed in Orientalist settings, have been empowered through their gaze and body language. Their eyes look directly at the viewer wrecking the fragility of past representations and their statuesque postures hold firm ground. Aggressive, secure, and forcefulness is Lalla’s Said response to the modern Arab women, breaking the continued view of the oppressed, isolated, and home-bound Islamic women.
The photographs are not based on traditional Eastern vernacular but one that reinterprets the Arab world through the point of view of a Westerner in order to reconstruct Islamic women of today. Though there are many aspects of the female life that remains faithful to tradition, as indicated by the conventional and historic settings in the photographs, Islamic women are coming out of the cocoon extended to them over years of cultural divides. The images therefore can be looked at as pretty compositions or something much much more; placed along the many works that intend to re-evaluate how Arab women are perceived in the West and providing the East grounds to do so; which, by default, is a part of the empowerment of women, on the scale of an exhibition. Photographs (in order of appearance)
Les Femmes du Maroc #1, 2005
Harem #14c, 2009
Les Femmes du Maroc #26B, 2006
Les Femmes du Maroc #2, 2008
Eugene Delacroix, Les Femmes d'Alger, 1834
Jean Auguste Domnique Ingres, Odalisque in Grisaille, 1824-34
Bullets Revisited #8, 2012
Harem #4, 2009
Bibliography
- ‘Biography’ in Lalla Essaydi (website). http://lallaessaydi.com/1.html. (last accessed: 31/07/2015)
- Cheers, Imani M. ‘Q&A: Lalla Essaydi Challenges Muslim, Gender Stereotypes at Museum of African Art’ in PBS (online). Art Beat. May 9, 2012
- http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/revisions/
- Karellas, Heather. ‘Images of the East in Renaissance Art’ in Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History. http://history.emory.edu/home/documents/endeavors/volume3/heatherKarellas.pdf (last accessed: 31/07/2015)
- Islam, Summer. ‘Orientalism, Nationalism and Architecture' from Architectural Association School of Architecture, HTS. 07/12/2012. http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/downloads/WritingPrize/2013Shortlist/SummerIslam.pdf
- ‘Lalla Essaydi’ in San Diego Museum of Art. http://www.sdmart.org/art/exhibit/lalla-essaydi (last accessed: 31/07/2015)
- ‘Lalla Essaydi’ in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lalla_Essaydi (last accessed: 31/07/2015)
- MacKenzie, John M. Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts. New York: Manchester University Press, 195.
- Meagher, Jennifer. ‘Orientalism in Nineteenth–Century Art’ in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/euor/hd_euor.htm (last accessed: 31/07/2015)
- Rao, Mallika. ‘The Veiled Feminism Of Moroccan-Born Photographer Lalla Essaydi’ in The Huffington Post. 02/11/2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/11/moroccan-artist-lalla-essaydi_n_6648794.html
- Sorabella, Jean. 'Portraiture in Renaissance and Baroque Europe' in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/port/hd_port.htm (last accessed: 31/07/2015)
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