Lalla Essaydi

[1] She moved to Boston in 1996 and earned her BFA from Tufts University in 1999 and her MFA in painting and photography from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 2003.

[2] Influenced by her experiences growing up in Morocco and Saudi Arabia, Essaydi explores the ways that gender and power are inscribed on Muslim women's bodies and the spaces they inhabit.

[4] She explores a wide range of perspectives, including issues of diaspora, identity, and expected location through her studio practice in Boston.

[7] Several pieces of her work (including Converging Territories) combine henna, which is traditionally used to decorate the hands and feet of brides, with Arabic calligraphy, a predominantly male practice.

[8] The women depicted in her exhibition of photographs, Les Femmes du Maroc, are represented as decorative and confined by the art of henna.

[10] Initiated in the early 2000s, Essaydi's photographic series Converging Territories captures women dressed in white, covered in Arabic calligraphy written with henna, positioned within traditional Moroccan domestic spaces.

[11] The scenes portrayed are a distinct form of resistance, allowing the women depicted to claim the spaces as their own and rewrite the narratives of their lived experiences.