Artwork Page for Les Femmes Du Maroc: La Grande Odalisque

Details / Information for Les Femmes Du Maroc: La Grande Odalisque

Les Femmes Du Maroc: La Grande Odalisque

2008

Lalla Essaydi

(Moroccan, b. 1956)
Culture
Morocco
Medium
chromogenic print mounted to aluminum with a UV protective laminate
Measurements
Overall: 76.2 x 101.6 cm (30 x 40 in.)
Credit Line
The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 2012.13
Copyright
© Lalla Essaydi
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print
?

Did You Know?

Lalla Essaydi's photographs provide a bridge from historic Islamic art into the contemporary Islamic world.

Description

Adapted from the renowned French neoclassical painting La Grande Odalisque by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), this photograph belongs to a series that reflects the complex female identities in the Muslim world. Inspired by her journal, Essaydi swathed the woman’s body with Arabic text using henna—associated with special celebratory events such as puberty, marriage, and bearing a first child when the feet and hands are decorated during female festivities. Similarly in Iran, paintings of stories in illustrated manuscripts were frequently adapted from established compositions from the 1300s through the 1600s.
Horizontally oriented photograph depicting a woman with light skin tone reclining, her face, clothes, and the white sheets behind and under her completely covered with brown Arabic text. The woman leans on her left elbow, body facing away as she turns to look over her right shoulder at us. Beige cloth wraps around her body and hair. Her knees bent slightly in, we can see bottom of her feet, stained blotchy brown.

Les Femmes Du Maroc: La Grande Odalisque

2008

Lalla Essaydi

(Moroccan, b. 1956)
Morocco

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