Lalla Essaydi
dal 15/5/2013 al 21/6/2013
Segnalato da
15/5/2013
Lalla Essaydi
Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
An exhibition of large-scale photographs from the artist's most recent series, Harem Revisited and Bullets Revisited
An exhibition of large-scale photographs from the artist's most recent series, Harem Revisited and Bullets Revisited. Lalla Essaydi was raised in Morocco and spent many years in Saudi Arabia, and although she was educated in Europe and the US and now lives in New York, this experience of traditional Islamic life was fundamental to her unique approach to the examination of the identity of the Muslim woman. Utilizing a unique working method and set of visual devices that she initiated in 2003 for the iconic series, "Converging Territories," Essaydi applies many layers of text written by hand with henna in Islamic calligraphy to the subject's faces, bodies, and environments. Then, she arranges her subjects in poses directly inspired by 19th Century French painters such as Ingres, Delacroix and Gerome, whose Orientalist paintings featured the harem and the eroticized Arab female body. Using the perspective of an Arab woman living in the West, Lalla Essaydi reexamines and questions this representation of the Arab female identity. Reception for the artist on Thursday, 16 May from 6-8pm.