Les Femme du Maroc: Convergence of territories to resist Western stereotypes of Arabic and Muslim women in Lalla Essaydi’s photography
Western preconceptions of Arabic and Muslim women are inherently problematic—that Muslim women are suppressed by their society, imprisoned by their religious veil, and constantly portrayed as victims of their own culture are very prominent in contemporary society. Secular nations such as France and Turkey claim to “liberate” Muslim women by banning hijabs in public has not progressed this movement of liberation for women—but rather the suppression of the identities of women. Lalla Essaydi, a US-based Moroccan artist, responds back to such problematic discourses through her photographic series Les Femme du Maroc by the re-iteration and staging her photographs with Orientalist paintings such as La Grande Odalisque by Jean-Dominique Auguste Ingres. Lalla Essaydi takes inspiration from Edward Saïd’s famous critique of Orientalism, with a reminiscence of the Shirin Neshat’s photographic series of Women of Allah through the layering of Arabic calligraphy. Essaydi uses women from the Moroccan diaspora or members of her family as models in order to restage Orientalist paintings. Compared to her photographic series, the original Orientalist paintings preserve the colonial gaze and its enduring perception towards Arabic and Muslim women. Through Essaydi’s removal of lush and decadent colors, and phallic objects associated with Orientalism, she exchanges for uniformity of bland colors and the veiled Arabic calligraphy in henna. Through Essaydi’s photographic series Les Femmes du Maroc, she uses binary oppositions such as West versus Orientalism, male experiences versus female experiences and merges them together to reveal Western discourses of confining Arab women—not only in history—but also in contemporary societies as a form of resistance to stereotypes. Through analyzing the artistic components of Essaydi’s photographs, her work limits representation and avoids generalization.
Essaydi’s replication of Orientalist painting disrupts the orientalist gaze by removing decadence and materialism associated with the West. Through Essaydi’s observation of Jean-Dominique Ingres’s representation of Arab women, she felt that the perception Arab women distorts as a “Western male fascination and a fantasy,” (Cheers) of which this vision still permeates in our contemporary space today. In addition, this constant representation of Arab women impacts their lives and roles in their societies. The portrayal of Arab women by Jean-Dominque Ingres exposes ethnographic voyeurism for the Odalisque—taking the suggestive look of the woman as a sexual invitation. Ingres elongates the nude body of the woman in order to represent the European ideal—and emulates carnal pleasure for the viewer. Ingres adds very lush and decadent hues of color like gold, blue, and black to add stark contrasts to the pale body of the odalisque. Ingres then places a phallic object into the hands of the odalisque to subvert the viewer’s focus mostly towards her bottom and pelvic area. The painting overemphasizes the job of the odalisque as apart of a concubine in a harem is to provide pleasure for the Sultan through her illustrious naked body. Ingres’s painting romanticizes colonial culture through its softening details but also through several objects placed along the odalisque, such as the peacock fan and the hookah by her feet, to illustrate symbols of the Orient. The pale body of the odalisque has no sign of visible flaws, which creates a vision of blankness or a blank slate of which male desires are projected onto her. Ingres fame in the neo-classical arts skyrocketed through his many nude paintings, of which La Grande Odalisque as his most famous work. Ingres’s representation and sexualization of the Orient and its women dehumanizes them as mere sexual objects and in turn removes their agency in their respective society to cater to the male desire.
Essaydi, on the other hand, refutes this notion and repositions her models as the only focal point of her photographs and gazes back to uninvited the viewer. Essaydi critiques that Orientalist images blurs “the boundaries between public and private, and—in response—the Arab world reinstated these boundaries in a clear and visible way.” Moreover, Essaydi believes that the “Arab women inherently occupy a private space, but, wherever a woman is, when a man enters that space, he transforms it into a public space,” (Nassar) thus the choice to have the model to “gaze back” onto the camera. The restaging of Ingres’s painting of the odalisque, and the veil reveals the variety of ways Arab women have been portrayed as passive victims, or as sexual objects through eroticizing them as a part of the Orient—or the other. Essaydi removal of Oriental symbols and decadence represents as a form of resistance to not represent Arab women as merely “passive, sexual slaves, or jezebels.” (Nassar)
In particular, Essaydi’s photograph of La Grande Odalisque 2 from her series of Les Femmes du Maroc targets Ingres’s painting and ends the portrayal of silence and passivity in Arab women. The photograph remains true to Ingres’s painting as the odalisque in the center frame. Essaydi removes all colors from the painting, which creates a minimalist and homogeneity of the background with the clothing of the model. Essaydi suspends the colonial gaze as the clothed model resists by gazes back towards the camera. The veil of illegible Arabic calligraphy done by henna adds another complex layer that prevents the photograph from emulating a blank slate that may suggest the projection of male fantasies and desires onto the woman. The calligraphy is not only present in the foreground of the photograph but also written on the woman’s body.
Consider this: though one might interpret the Arabic calligraphy as a protective layer for the women of Essaydi’s photographic series as a source of empowerment—the art of calligraphy is a male dominated tradition. The calligraphy written on the women’s body throughout the photographic series is invasive and a political representation of several discourses projected and burdened upon these women. For as long as history can remember, Arab women have been used as sexual slaves such as the odalisque that fascinate the West, and transitions to their victimization that needs protection from their religion or abusive Arab men portrayed in contemporary Western media. Discourses projected as visual language in the photographs disrupts the women’s inability to enjoy their sensuality and nudity as it silences and negates their agency.
The illegible Arabic calligraphy is incomprehensible even to those who can read Arabic, in which becomes an area of questioning authenticity of taking representation as the basic truth—but rather points out that all representations are political. To the general viewer, one can easily associate the writings from the Qu’ran, which adds onto the idea that representations can be political without context. But this creates an opportunity of misinterpretation for the average Western viewer as it can support the notion that Arab women are oppressed by their religion and are in need of liberation from foreign forces.
But Essaydi refutes this Western perception, and creates a stark division that occurs between “private spaces” versus “public spaces,” through the insertion of Arabic calligraphy from her diary. The additions of scripts draws boundaries of what is considered private and public space as the excerpts acts as a secret language and form of communication for the women of her photographs. The duality of the calligraphy contains the symbol as a visual language of discourses projected upon women through the use of the male dominated tradition of calligraphy, but also, acts as a source of empowerment as the diary entries resist and transform as a feminine discourse. Moreover, women for celebrations such as birthdays and weddings—symbolizing growth and maturity, often use the use of henna— the ink present in Essaydi’s calligraphy.
The uniformity that Essaydi incorporates her photographs illustrates a sense of anonymity and protection, in contrast to Orientalist paintings that evoke mysticism and intrigue surrounding the Arab female body. Similarly the Orientalist paintings removes the women of their agency through as their bodies are not the main focus but paired materialistic objects instead. The models in her photographs do not display objects that associate them to a certain socio-economic status in order to prevent class structures to dichotomize her work—but rather unify them as sharing a common experience as an Arab woman. Essaydi does not create stark divisions such as West versus Orient but rather “I feel I inhabit (and perhaps even embody) a “crossroads,” where the cultures come together—merge, interweave, and, sometimes, clash,” (Nassar) in which she brings both concepts of the portrayal of Arab women in Muslim societies with the portrayal of Arab women through the West. The photographs simply point out that viewer cannot fully understand and appreciate the complexity and layered meanings behind Essaydi’s work just by understanding it from only the Western perspective or only from a Muslim perspective—but rather merge to convey the agency and resistance of the Muslim woman from dehumanizing stereotypes that silence them.
Les Femmes du Maroc engages a conversation with Orientalist paintings in respect to understanding representation and the limitations in generalizing of social and gender roles. In the particular photograph called Moorish Woman apart of the Essaydi’s series features the veil, of which its significance has been radically distorted through Western perception. The Moorish Woman photograph is layered with the same Arabic calligraphy throughout the photographic series, with the difference that the model is not looking towards the camera. Her head is bowing down to put on her veil or hijab. This pose captures a vulnerable moment for Arab and Muslim women as it makes the viewer intrusive looking into the practice putting on a cloth that is deeply misunderstood and widely disputed in Western culture.
To the West, the veil became “the most visible marker of differentness and inferiority of Islamic societies.” (152, Gender in Islam, Ahmed.) Moreover, this sentiment transformed in modern day society that the veil was an oppressive force imposed upon Arab women by their male counterparts for the sake of Islam. The meaning of the veil has been deeply violated by imperialism and Orientalist paintings that elicit pleasure surrounding the mystique of the veil. As mentioned before, discourses portraying colonial culture in paintings blur the boundaries of private and public space of the viewer and the models in the photographs. Essaydi reinstates and merges the function of the veil and the layer Arabic calligraphy to ensure the private space for Arab women, and challenges the viewer of taking accountability for their intrusive and voyeuristic gaze during intimate moments of an Arab woman.
The veiling of the Arabic woman also known as the hijab in its simplest form is “a barrier or a partition.” (BBC.CO.UK) And from the Qu’ran, the veil “should lower their gaze and guard their modesty,” (24:30) commanded to both women and men as a form of respect. But also the veil was instructed for “that is most convenient, that they should be known (as such) and not molested. And Allah is oft-forgiving, most merciful,” (33:59) But through Western colonialist and Orientalist paintings, transforms into perverse shift from the “otherness” of the veil into a sexual fascination when it’s religious purpose is to avoid its sexualizing and dehumanizing Muslim women. The misinterpretations of the veil devoid Arab women of agency and a source of identity but manifests as a form of identification, of which many Western cultures has deemed the cloth oppressive rather than liberating. In other words, Essaydi disrupts set values of what is conceived as liberating in the West, and oppressive in Islam.
Though many art critics felt that Essaydi does not resist stereotypes but rather re-iterates them through framing her photographs in the same way of Orientalist paintings. Benjamin Genocchio critiques Les Femmes du Maroc in which Essaydi did not accomplish resisting Orientalist discourse if she replicates her photographs from painters like Ingres that romanticize colonial culture. He adds the “ [I am] not sure she always transforms them enough. Too often her photographs look like an exercise in voyeurism, replicating rather than revising the stereotypical imagery she is working with.” Despite, that the whole photographs are positioned to force the viewer to face the “sexual content of his/her expectations.” (Errazouki). While Genocchio makes a valid point on how can replication of Orientalism act may fail to resist and critique it, there has been a barrier of misunderstanding when viewing such photographs from a Westernized perspective. And that many viewers cannot see beyond the different—cultural and religious—meanings behind the veil rather than a mere signal for stereotyping Arab women.
Furthermore, the incorporation of the veil and Arabic denounces the sexual fantasies employed from the Orientalist discourse. The veil to an Arab woman is a source of liberation and expression of identity rather than as an oppressive force. Both components of the veil and Arabic calligraphy open up a call for representing women as active in their religion and politics of their respective society—in order words, reclaiming their identity and agency. Hélène Cixous, a feminist philosopher notes the importance of women’s inspiration of other women:
I shall speak about women’s writing: about what it will do. Woman must
write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from
which they have been drive away as violently as from their bodies—for the
same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put
herself into the text—as into the world and into story—by her own movement.
In which Cixous illustrates the importance of a woman’s agency and narrative in order to resist against discourses that dehumanize and objectify her. Essaydi’s photographs forces the viewer to take responsibility and have awareness of enduring discourses or stereotypes that she faces today.
Essaydi blends in history with contemporary problems that Arab and Muslim women specifically. The photographs avoid the representation to generalize and accommodate all women of color, but rather, targets and sympathize women in Arab societies.