Artist Lalla Essaydi challenges stereotypes of women in Islamic cultures

In 1996, Essaydi moved to Boston, “for schools for my children.” She continued her studies and in 2003 received an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Distance from her homeland gave her a new perspective.

‘Dreaming about freedom’

Essadyi’s visits to Morocco resulted in her series “Converging Territories,” in which women are depicted wrapped in veils and covered in henna calligraphy, an art she taught herself. Some of the photographs were taken in the house to which she had been sent for punishment as child.

Essaydi, who spends months preparing photo shoots, often uses family friends as models. The application of the henna, using a syringe, is arduous. It can take nine hours “and cannot be interrupted. The models are unable to rest.”

The models endure “because they feel they are contributing to the greater emancipation of Arab women and at the same time conveying to a Western audience a very rich tradition often misunderstood in the West,” she says. “They see themselves as part of a small feminist movement.”

In the photographs, the calligraphy follows the folds of the women’s clothes, dips into crevices, begins in one room and ends in another. It is only partially legible to those who read Arabic, telling only the part of Essaydi’s story that she allows to be read.

“Whatever I write is written in a poetic way,” she says. “It is public but private; even if they read it, it is not literal. It could apply to anyone or any person.”

Essaydi is uncomfortable with the notion that her work may be construed as a representation of all Arab women. “I am much too aware of the range of traditions and laws among the different Arab nations to presume to speak for every one,” she says. Though she knows that her art might anger some people, she welcomes that reaction. What she wouldn’t want is for people to dismiss it. “It is a little bit of my soul in there,” she says.

In a translation of the Arabic calligraphy, Essaydi gives a glimpse into her journey. She writes: “I am dreaming about freedom and don’t know how to talk about it. I am staring at the book and not sure what language I am supposed to speak. When a book is translated, it loses something in the process and what am I but generations of translations? I stand guilty outside and I stand guilty inside, profoundly buried in my translation, panting behind the words that are carried along by vital forces far greater than my own. I am a book that has no ending. Each page I write could be the first.”

Lalla Essaydi: Revisions

May 9-Feb. 24, National Museum of African Art, 950 Independence Ave. SW, 202-633-4600. www.nmafa.si.edu.