Jasmine Barrios Lalla Essaydi

Lalla Essaydi is a Moroccan female artist. However she has showcased her artwork internationally. Through Essaydi’s work she is allowing us the audience an insight to her life as female Muslim artist. In her work she showcases woman in sacred places in her hometown Morocco, she returned to her hometown so that she could relive her childhood and once again understand what life as a Muslim Moroccan woman was like. The woman in her photos have sacred text written all over their bodies and sometimes clothing. In other photos the woman are blending in with the sacred building which they are in. the concept behind her work and placing these woman in these setting and adorning them in this text is to represent them as “odalisques” which means to belong to a place. Essaydi is telling a story of how these women and herself belong to where they are from and they are satisfied of who they are. It is literally written on them and they are engulfed in their culture, Essaydi states she doesn’t want to seem like a victim and these photos are not meant for that purpose.  Instead she wants to display proud women who are unashamed of where they are from and who they are.