Le Femmes du Maroc #14
2007 C41 Print mounted on aluminum available in 40 x 30" and 48 x 60"

Lalla A. Essaydi received her M.F.A from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is currently a Painting Instructor at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Born in Morocco and living in Saudi Arabia until moving to the States to earn her BFA and MFA much of Essaydi's work deals with her transition as a woman from an Eastern culture to a Western culture. Essaydi is represented by Martha Schneider Gallery in Chicago, and Laurence Miller Gallery in New York. Essaydi is in the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, and Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, MA. The traditions of Islam exist within spatial boundaries. The presence of men defines public space, the streets, the meeting places. Women are confined to private spaces, the architecture of the homes. In photographing women inscribed with henna, I emphasize their decorative role, but subvert the silence of confinement. The calligraphic writing, a sacred Islamic art form, inaccessible to women, constitutes an act of rebellion. Applying such writing in henna, a form of adornment considered "women's work," further underscores the subversiveness of the act. In this way, the calligraphy in the images is one of a number of visual signs that carry a double meaning. As a visual sign, the writing on the body and garments veils; as a textual form, it conveys expression.

As an artist now living in the West, I have become aware of another space, besides the house of my girlhood, an interior space, one of "converging territories". I will always carry that house within me, but my current life has added other dimensions. There is the very different space I inhabit in the West, a space of independence and mobility. It is from there that I can return to the landscape of my childhood in Morocco, and consider these spaces with detachment and new understanding.
- Lalla A. Essaydi