Postcolonialism and Lalla Essaydi

Ch 10 Response: Postcolonialism as Applied to the Art of Lalla Essaydi

Eric Notaro

Reading this week's chapter on Postcolonialism reminded me of a gallery I saw about two years ago at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum just outside of Boston. The artist, Morocco-born Lalla Essaydi, plays with 19^th century Orientalist depictions of the Middle East as an exotic sexualized culture.

Essaydi photographs re-stagings of paintings entirely with a cast of women dressed in traditional clothing. Most importantly, she imposes Hena caligraphy, an art form traditionally used by women, all over the set and clothing. The result is a re-envisioning of women in the context of these paintings. Where the original paintings are colorful, decadent, and often erotic depictions of women in Middle Eastern culture, Essaydi's work neutralizes the color scheme and submerges the reader in a wash of illegible words. The western depiction is replaced by a subtle, toned down image that comes from local cultural roots. For some examples, compare Ingre's “The Grand Odalisque” (1812) with Essaydi's “Les Femmes du Maroc: Grande Odalisque” and Gérôme’s “The Slave Market” (1867) with “Les Femmes du Maroc #4.” (Click on titles for link to images if hyperlink isn't visible)

While her work can be seen as feminist, and is intended to be so, I believe it's also relevant to the ideas presented in Postcolonialism. Her work takes on the hegemony of Western depictions of women in the Middle East and creates a kind of visual hybridity between Moroccan tradition and the posing of Western paintings depicting it. Her work is not without its flaws. As this reviewer (< Click if hyperlink isn't visible) points out, by framing her models in the exact pose of the 19^th century Orientalist paintings, she is still retaining the same stereotypes of Middle Eastern women rather than subverting them. I don't entirely agree since the dress of her models, the fact that there are no men present, and the ubiquity of hena recontextualizes the poses and complicates any depictions through hegemony. Still, the review presents an interesting problem: if a subaltern artist attempts to use the same composition of a more hegemonic piece but filtered through a different cultural lens, which one will win out? Do we see Essaydi's work as maintaining those cultural stereotypes because she chose to keep the composition of the 19^th century paintings or do her subaltern alterations not rise enough to the challenge to conflict with the image she is attempting to complicate? In other words, does a failure to appreciate her alterations com from the fact that we're more likely to see the Orientalist paintings than her culture?

I know this delves more into Postcolonialism as applied to art criticism but I feel like this is an important example to use as it demonstrates an attempt by a more marginalized group to co-opt imagery of the dominant culture. Writers, in that respect, face the same issues but in a different medium.