The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 13, 2025

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
chromogenic print mounted to aluminum with a UV protective laminate
Overall: 76.2 x 101.6 cm (30 x 40 in.)
The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 2012.13
© Lalla Essaydi
Location: Not on view

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.
  • 2008–?
    Lalla Essaydi, New York, NY
    ?–2012
    (Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    2012–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Enwezor, Okwui, and Chika Okeke-Agulu. Contemporary African Art Since 1980. Bologna: Damiani, 2009.
    Essaydi, Lalla, and Fatima Mernissi. Les Femmes Du Maroc. Brooklyn, NY: PowerHouse Books, 2009. p. 27
  • Islamic art rotation. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 16, 2015-December 19, 2016).
  • {{cite web|title=Les Femmes Du Maroc: La Grande Odalisque|url=false|author=Lalla Essaydi|year=2008|access-date=13 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2012.13