Leyla Aliyeva visits “Beyond Time and Beauty”
By Nigar Orujova
The Baku Museum of Modern Art opened its doors to Lalla Essaydi's "Beyond Time and Beauty" exhibition on November 14.
Vice President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva and Arzu Aliyeva visited the exhibition.
Aida Mahmudova, the founder of YARAT! Contemporary Art Space, said, "We are honored to present Lalla Essaydi's exhibition "Beyond Time and Beauty", held in collaboration with YARAT."
"We anticipate that this work will greatly appeal to the people of Baku who live with many visual traditions that result from our long and legendary history," Mahmudova said.
"Beyond Time and Beauty" is Essaydi's first exhibition in Azerbaijan and follows her exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art in 2012-2013. Bringing together works throughout her career, the show features the "Harem", "Bullets", "Converging Territories", and "Les Femmes du Maroc" series.
The exhibition is part of a growing program of international contemporary art exhibitions at the Baku Museum of Modern Art, facilitated by YARAT, a not-for-profit contemporary art organization dedicated to nurturing an understanding of contemporary art in Azerbaijan.
Essaydi came to prominence over the past decade for her re-examination of Orientalist motifs, Islamic iconography, and perception of Middle Eastern women using photography, mixed-media, and installation.
Essaydi's formative years were spent in Morocco and Saudi Arabia, and she studied in Europe and the United States. The multiple perspectives created from this mixed experience are integral to her work and its interrogative line: "In my art," Essaydi says, "I wish to present myself through multiple lenses - as an artist, as a Moroccan, asa Saudi Arabian, as a traditionalist, as a Liberal, as a Muslim. In short, I invite the viewer to resist stereotypes."
As the curator, Dina Nasser-Khadivi says: "Essaydi is a remarkable international artist; she navigates pervasive cultural and aesthetic dichotomies to make something wholly original - East and West, Tradition and Modernity, and the changing perceptions of women."
Calling upon visual traditions that range from Moroccan harem architecture to Arabic calligraphy and figures from the Orientalist painting tradition, Essaydi leans on the iconography that has shaped her. Her figures in "Les Femmes du Maroc" are entirely enveloped in Islamic calligraphy; words, applied in henna, adorn their skin, their robes, and the interiors that surround them.
The text seems to entrap the women and is simultaneously a form of decoration which marks some of the most significant moments of an Islamic woman's life.
A fully illustrated color catalogue will accompany the exhibition and include an essay by Dr Olga Nefedova, the founding director at the Orientalist Museum, Qatar.
Essaydi was raised in Morocco and spent many years in Saudi Arabia, and although she was educated in Europe and the United States, the experience of a traditional Islamic life was fundamental in shaping her.
Her photography provides a contemporary reflection on an iconography that stretches as far back as the Orientalist imagery of nineteenth century artists such as Ingres, Delacroix, and Gerome.
Essaydi has recently produced a series of pictures in a former harem in Morocco.
Lalla Essaydi lives in New York. Selections from her series "Les Femmes du Maroc" were published by power House Books in 2009.
Recent exhibitions of her work have been staged at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Williams College Museum, Williamstown, Mass., and the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio.
Her works are put on display the Louvre, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles; Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.