Lalla Essaydi - Exhibitions - Edwynn Houk Gallery.
Moroccan-born, New York-based photographer Lalla Essaydi (b. 1956) explores issues surrounding the role of women in Arab culture and their representation in the western European artistic tradition. Her large-scale photographs are based on nineteenth-century Orientalist paintings but work to subvert those stereotyped and sexualized representations.
Lalla A. Essaydi (born 1956) is a Moroccan-born photographer known for her staged photographs of Arab women. She currently works in Boston, Massachusetts and lives in New York City. Essaydi's work is represented by Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston and Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York City.
Moroccan born photographer Lalla Essaydi explores Arab female identity by hand-painting Arabic calligraphy in henna on different surfaces such as female bodies, fabric and walls. Through her compositions, Essaydi references nineteenth century Orientalist style and rejects traditional objectified representations of Arab women.
The artist's first solo gallery show in the UAE, Leila Heller Gallery's Lalla Essaydi: Still in Progress, features 15 works that span each of Essaydi's major projects from 2003 to 2013.
Lalla Essaydi was born in 1956 and was primarily influenced by the 1970s growing up. The 1970s were a period of consolidation and growth in the arts, most often characterised as a response to the central tensions of the previous decade. Conceptual art emerged as a influential movement, a partial evolution of and response to minimalism.
Renowned Marrakech-born artist Lalla Essaydi employs painting, mixed media, video, installations, and photography to convey her personal observations and experiences as a woman living in the Arab world.
Lalla Essaydi's refined work belies its subversive, challenging nature. Moroccan-born, Essaydi became an artist after relocating from Saudi Arabia to the United States. She believes her work, with its intimate portrayal of Moroccan women, would not have been possible without distance from her homeland.