Femmes du Maroc #23 (The Women of Morocco #23)

Label

In North Africa, some Berber-speaking and Muslim women inscribe elaborate designs on their faces, hands, feet, and bodies using henna paint as markers of beauty, maturity, and ethnic identity. Artist Lalla Essaydi notes:

"Henna is a crucial element in the life of a Moroccan woman and is associated with the major celebrations in her life. It is first applied when a girl reaches puberty, to mark her passage into womanhood. When she is a bride it is used to enhance her charms for her husband. Finally, it is applied when she has her first child, to celebrate fertility. Especially when that firstborn is male."

In her series Femmes du Maroc, Essaydi portrays women in interior spaces. She has made the garments and written the henna onto their clothes. In making these images, she addresses the misrepresentation of Muslim women within the Western imaginary.

"Colonial depictions of women have bequeathed an artist legacy to the "West," which has only made visible the types of images that fill museums and art books. I insist on my multiple identities and demand that all of my identities be respected—be they geographic, cultural, faith-based, or artistic—since they demonstrate that I am part of a cosmopolitan world with its joyous and sorrowful aspects.

In the absence of any specificity of place, the text [in this work] itself becomes the world of the subjects—their thoughts, speech, work, clothing, shelter, and nomadic home. This text is of course incomplete. It involves the viewer as well as the writer in a continual process of reading and revising, of losing and finding its multiple and discontinuous threads. Similarly, the bodies of the women in the photographs can only be gathered and informed by multiple visual readings. Both are as elusive as "woman" herself—not simply because she is veiled or turns away but because she is still in progress." —Lalla Essaydi, 2006

From the 2019 exhibition Global Contemporary: A Focus on Africa, curated by Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Curator of African Art

Course History

HIST 7.2, Harem: European Imaginations and Ottoman Realities, Zeynep Turkyilmaz, Katherine Hart, Amelia Kahl, Spring 2012

WRIT 5, Memoirs of Family, Ellen Rockmore, Fall 2013

WGST 10, Sex, Gender, and Society, Giavanna Munafo, Fall 2013

WGST 37.2, GEOG 41, Gender, Space and Islam, Jennifer Fluri, Fall 2013

NAS 42, WGST 40, Gender Topics in Native American Life, Vera Palmer, Fall 2013

ANTH 31, WGST 36, Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Lauren Gulbas, Fall 2013

NAS 42, WGST 40, Gender Topics in Native American Life, Vera Palmer, Fall 2013

SART 30, Photography II, Fall 2013

SART 29, Photography I, Fall 2013

WGST 41.4, Transnational Muslim Feminisms, Zahra. Ayubi, Fall 2014

REL 28.04, MES 19.05, WGSS 43.06, Gender in Islam, Zahra Ayubi, Spring 2020

Exhibition History

Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body, Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 1-August 10, 2008; Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, September 10-December 10, 2008; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California, January 21-April 26, 2009.

Global Contemporary: A Focus on Africa; Dorothy and Churchill Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 17-December 8, 2019.

Shadowplay: Transgressive Photography from the Hood Museum of Art, Owen Robertson Cheatham and Friends Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 10-December 8, 2013.

Undercover: Performing and Transforming Black Female Identities, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia, September 10-December 5, 2009.

Publication History

Barbara Thompson, Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body, Seattle: University of Washington Press [Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College], 2008, p. 347, plate 126.

Brian P. Kennedy and Emily Shubert Burke, Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2009 p.209, no.274.

Provenance

Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts; sold to present collection, 2006.

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Subjects