La Grande Odalisque from the series Les Femmes du Maroc
2008
Color photograph
71 x 86 in.
VMFA, Richmond
"Lalla Essaydi’s photography explores the charged issue of veiling and revealing that surrounds Islamic women. The women in the series Les Femmes du Maroc are enveloped in Islamic calligraphy, inscribed in henna on their skin, robes, and surrounding interiors. The text entraps them yet recalls a form of decoration often applied in celebration or for good luck. As an evocative response to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Grande Odalisque (1814), Essaydi’s image replaces a Western male perspective on “the Orient” with that of a Muslim female."
— John B. Ravenal, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
READ AND TAKE NOTES:
AFTER CAREFULLY REVIEWING THE RESOURCES ASSIGNED ABOVE: Answer the following questions completely and with specificity to the provided resources, personal reflection, and additional research as needed:
1. Explain the 3 properties of art as you see them in Essadyi's work.
2. What is Orientalism? What inaccuracies have been presented in what Essaydi calls the "Orientalist lens of the West"?
3. How do Essaydi's images "conceal" AND "reveal"?
1. Explain the 3 properties of art as you see them in Essadyi's work.
2. What is Orientalism? What inaccuracies have been presented in what Essaydi calls the "Orientalist lens of the West"?
3. How do Essaydi's images "conceal" AND "reveal"?
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