The series Les Femmes du Maroc is Essaydi’s response to 19th-century Orientalist fascination with and portrayal of North African women. Each photograph in the series derives from a specific Orientalist painting. Les Femmes du Maroc, for example, plays on Eugène Delacroix’s Femmes d’Alger.
Essaydi has taken Delacroix’s depiction of women in the sequestered space of a harem and removed all recognizable decorative elements. By positioning the Moroccan models to replicate Delacroix’s composition and inserting her own handwritten narrative, Essaydi appropriates and undermines notions of the harem and Islamic cultures as exotic and remote. She dismantles the image yet embraces the aesthetics on which it is founded, challenging viewers to discern the complex layering within her work.
Description:
Warmly-toned chromogenic print of a dozing dark haired woman whose skin is covered in henna inscriptions from head to toe, and wrapped in and lying upon white fabric that is also inscribed with arabesque script in brown henna.
Exhibition History:
African Mosaic: Selections from the Permanent Collection, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., November 19, 2013–August 12, 2019 (installed April 6 to October 4, 2016)
Lalla Essaydi: Revisions, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., April 11, 2012-February 25, 2013
Content Statement:
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Image Requests:
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