Beyond Beauty: Lalla Essaydi

25 Oct-21 Dec 2013

Overview

Currently based in the USA, Essaydi returns to her Moroccan girlhood through her work, looking back on it as an adult woman caught somewhere between past and present, and as an artist, exploring the language in which to “speak” from this uncertain space. She employs photography intersected with an array of artistic media and practices extending from installation to calligraphy and henna painting in her attempt to challenge Orientalist readings of Arab female identity. In this sense, Beyond Beauty documents how the artist constructs beauty through the assumption of tradition and the past and how she reaches through the windows of history, gender, architecture and culture.