Exhibition Review: Lalla Essaydi: A New Gaze
Written by Katie Grierson
Copy Edited by Hillary Mitchell
Photo Edited by Lucia Luzzani
Combating Western stereotypes and Orientalism, Lalla Essaydi plays on tired tropes in Lalla Essaydi: A New Gaze, at the Edwynn Houk Gallery. Through the use of historical allusions, calligraphy, and her subjects’ bodies, viewers are invited to resist their stereotypical way of viewing Arab women. The exhibition merges several of her photographic series of work, which together traverse both the lived realities of Arab women and the harmful misconceptions and fantasies that have followed them through cultures and centuries.
The new gaze Essaydi presents in this exhibition is one she’s been fostering her entire career; the exhibition unites her photographic series Converging Territories (2002-04), Les Femmes du Maroc (2005-07), Harem (2009), and Bullets (2009-14).
In Converging Territories, Essaydi made sense of the woman she was by physically reentering the spaces of her childhood and reflecting upon male-centered nature of Islamic architecture and buildings. Women have been confined to private spaces, while men go to work, attend meetings and walk down the street. In this series, therefore, Essaydi also confines women in their homes, letting tradition and the subversion of tradition coexist as she introduces calligraphy and henna. Calligraphy, which in Islamic culture is presented as a male art form, commingles with the female-associated henna and the subjects of Essaydi’s photo speak–even in confinement. This photo series recognizes the complexity of being an Arab woman, and of Essaydi’s own experiences. Speaking about the series, she states, “Ultimately, I wish for my work to be as vividly present and yet as elusive as ‘woman’ herself — not simply because she is veiled or turns away – but because she is still in progress.”
Les Femmes du Maroc alludes back to Les Femmes d’Algiers, a painting by French Romantic Artist Eugène Delacroix from 1834. The series of photographs recreates nineteenth-century European and American Orientalist paintings; but in the process of recreation, male subjects are removed, female subjects are clothed, and calligraphy covers the walls and bodies of the women photographed. This series purposefully combats Western views of Arab women, a view which sexualizes and erotisizes.
The Grande Odalisque, an erotic painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, experiences a rebirth: through Essaydi’s eyes, the female figure questions us, the bottom of her feet stained by the ink of the calligraphy, confronting our gaze and the male-gaze that brought her likeness to life in 1814.
Brought together, Essaydi has constructed a years-long narrative that is both highly-specific and universal. The story of A New Gaze is her own: “It is obvious that while my photographs are expressions of my own personal history, they can also be taken as reflections on the life of Arab women in general,” she stated in her artist statement about Converging Territories. “There are continuities, of course, within Arab culture, but I am uncomfortable thinking of myself as a representative of all Arab women…It is the story of my quest to find my own voice, the unique voice of an artist…” A New Gaze questions views of women in the past, and how these views have affected our present and the lives of Arab women, through magnificent photography and epic imagery. Most importantly, Essaydi’s voice and vision lead us and invite into her own personal journey as a woman still in progress.
Lalla Essaydi: A New Gaze can be viewed from March 24 to April 30, 2022 at the Edwynn Houk Gallery.