In Conversation with Lalla Essaydi

Les Femmes du Maroc: Grande Odalisque 2

Q: You were born in Morocco but you are living in the US. How much and in which ways do these opposite cultures mark your works? 
A: As an artist now living in the West, I have become aware of another space, besides the house of my girlhood, an interior space, one of "converging territories." I will always carry that house within me, but my current life has added other dimensions. There is the very different space I inhabit in the West, a space of independence and mobility. It is from there that I can return to the landscape of my childhood in Morocco, and consider these spaces with detachment and new understanding. When I look at these spaces now, I see the two cultures that have shaped me and which are distorted when looked at through the "Orientalist" lens of the West.

Q: “The Orient has helped to define the Europe (or the West)” argued E. Said in his seminal work Orientalism[1], What do you think of this quote in regard to your life?
A: As a Moroccan-born artist who lives in New York and Marrakesh as well as traveling frequently in the Arab world, I have become deeply aware of how the cultures of the so-called Orient and Occident view one another. I have become increasingly aware, in particular, of the impact of Western gaze on Arab culture. Edward Said famously described the dominant Western take on Arab culture in his (ground-breaking) book, Orientalism. Although Orientalism most often suggests a 19^th-century European vision of the East, as a set of assumptions it lives on today: both in the regard of the West and in the way Arab societies continue to internalize and respond to that regard. Because in its early form Orientalism was a literal “vision,” finding expression in the work of Western painters who traveled to the “exotic” East in search of cultures more colorful than their own, I have used it as a point of departure in much of my own work—painting and photography both. The imagery I found in Orientalist painting has resonated with me in tricky ways and ultimately helped me situate my own experience in a powerful visual language. I thought this complex of ideas we call Orientalism, as reflected in my work and the Western painting that inspired it, might serve to ground my remarks.

Q: It is evident that some of your works are a clear allegory to Orientalism, a feminine reinterpretation and a modern point of view – if only for the medium used – of masterpieces such as Ingres (The big odalisque) and Gerome (The guard of the Harem). Are you trying to reconstruct (and/or change) the past through contemporary image? 
A: Orientalism, as I mentioned at the outset of this inverview, has long been a source of fascination for me. My background in art is in painting, and it is as a painter that I began my investigation into Orientalism. My study led me to a much deeper understanding of the painting space so beautifully addressed by Orientalist painters in thrall to Arab décor. For its terrific prominence in these paintings, this décor made me keenly aware of the importance of interior space in Arab/Islamic culture. And finally of course, I became aware of the patterns of cultural domination and predatory sexual fantasy encoded in Orientalist painting.

Orientalism provide a kind of foil for my own work, which sets out to invoke, interrogate, and complicate the Orientalist tradition. In so doing, I hope to make possible, within the projected space of Orientalist painting, a new space, an openness to a new kind of understanding.

Harem #4b

Q: How did – and how does – in your opinion, Orientalism affect Western perception of Islam and the Arab Culture?
A: Interestingly, it is not only the West that has been prevented from seeing Arab culture accurately. How people in the Arab world see themselves has also been affected by the distorting lens of Orientalism. There’s some evidence that the Orientalist perspective has had an impact on the actual lives of men and women, and especially that the rules for Arab women became much stricter as a result of Western influence. When the West portrays Eastern women as sexual victims and Eastern men as depraved, the effect is to emasculate Eastern men, and to challenge the traditional values of honor and family. So Arab men feel the need to t be even more protective of Arab women, preventing them from becoming targets of fantasy by veiling them. The veil protects them from the gaze of Orientalism. While we’ll probably never know whether the return to the veil and the rules that accompany it is a response to Western influence or merely coincidental, it’s hard to believe there’s no relationship.

But by invoking the Orientalist tradition in a way that makes the viewer aware of its inherent assumptions, I hope not to provoke some kind of “blame game” but rather to liberate viewers – Arab and Western alike – from the grip of these assumptions. Furthermore, I am not a sociologist, I am an artist, working from a particular vantage point, and as such hope to give full expression to a uniqueness that I hope will resonate with the uniqueness of each viewer.

Tunisia: Faced With a Life in Limbo Part II

During my two week visit to the Shousha refugee camp on the Libyan-Tunisian border I had the fortunate opportunity of meeting several individuals who were trying to make the most out their new living situation after the Libyan civil war erupted. In part two of my series on how two young women have managed to overcome their obstacles while faced with a life in limbo I introduce twenty-year old Mowahab Abdullah Noor.

As a means of preserving her identity due to the nature of the story she reveals I opted not share her portrait but instead an artistic view of the sprawling tent city that was erected to house the thousands of economic migrants, political refugees and asylum seekers that sought refuge in Tunisia. This is her story.

My name is Mowahab Abdullah Noor and I'm twenty-years-old. I was born in 1990 and have never lived outside of Libya or ever seen my country of Sudan. My parents are from Al Fasher City in Darfur. The problems in Darfur started in 1958 when the Sudanese government started preventing Darfurian people from living a normal life like the other Sudanese by denying them access to government jobs, education in the University and there was a lot of racism.

Fearing for their life, my parents fled to the capital Khartoum and then to Tripoli in 1988 because during this time the government was attacking villages, taking women as hostages or using them as human shields and killing new born boys because they believed that once they reached adulthood they would take up arms against the central government.

There are some people that choose to close their eyes to the truth but I'll never stop sharing these stories.

While in Libya my father worked as a cook and my mother was a domestic worker for Libyan families. My two brothers and younger sister and I attended the best schools that our parents could afford and before fleeing Libya I was in my third year of University pursuing a degree in the medical field.

When the Libyan civil war broke out my family was shocked because we never thought revolutions on this scale could ever happen in the Arab world. Actually, in Tunisia and Egypt it was great to see the people take back their freedom after all those years of being oppressed but in Libya it took a bloody turn because people no longer respected the law and started raping women, taking hostages and killing people.

Eventually all the companies shut down and my father and I lost our jobs, our education was halted due to the closure of the schools and for two months we remained trapped in our house because no one was allowed to go out, especially men because they were killing any males caught on the street.

The situation became very difficult for us because we were drinking tap water, which was so salty and undrinkable but it was what we had. Whenever there was relative calm on the streets our mother would go out to the market for food but there were many days that we starved from running out of food.

As refugees we had only two options, which was to stay in Libya and risk being killed by the NATO airstrikes or be killed by the Libyans but luckily we learned that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was helping those stranded flee Libya and on the 9 May we arrived at the Shousha refugee camp in Tunisia. However, the reality of ending up in a refugee camp has been a big tragedy for our parents because they left Sudan to protect us from living this kind of life, only to find it again.

Through this experience I've learned to be strong and accept this current situation by volunteering and working with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) where I've been able to work as a nurses aid and assist their psychologists who provide mental health services to inhabitants of the camp. This opportunity has actually allowed me to gain some hands on experience with working in the medical field, which is going to be helpful for when I'm eventually resettled in a new country and can resume my studies.

Zar: Women’s Medicine, Tradition and Rituals

Traditionally, religion has been one of the most powerful sources of both vision and values. Every religion, particularly indigenous, has evoked a new vision for society, aided in advancing the collective consciousness, and inspired both personal and institutional transformation. It has also been a source of division and social fragmentation. However, in indigenous spiritual practices, like the Zar, we find that women play a key role as leaders of ritual, keepers of the earth, and healers.

In parts of the Arab world, women diagnosed with acute cases of depression are, believed to be, possessed by the jinn. This depression or low spirit emphasizes an individuals inability to withstand psychological disorders usually brought about by deprivation, poverty, and hardship. Despite religious opposition, many women resort to the underground female healing ceremonies of the Zar, where a ritual-dance accompanied by music are conducted to appease or elevate these spirits or invoke their therapeutic capabilities.

"Gay Girl in Damascus" Blog: A Work of Great Fiction

A poster that appeared on a "Free Amina" facebook page.

Today, the person behind the popular confessional blog site "Gay Girl in Damascus" revealed their true identity. Blogger Amina Abdallah, known to devout readers from across the globe as a Syrian American lesbian with a talent for capturing everything from the excitement of the Arab Spring to sharing intimate, sensual poetry, was revealed to be...a man. Not only that, "Amina" is in fact a 40 year-old white American man currently studying in the UK by the name of Tom MacMaster.

The contempt felt by those who once followed him, or worse, those who only discovered him today through this new found notoriety (including this blogger, real name Amity Bacon), seems to have reached a fever pitch. And the reasons are fairly plain to see, as any white male blogger can attest.

The idea of a westerner born of white male privilege impersonating a queer Arab woman in order to have his voice heard is surely a painful irony. And I can only imagine that actual, real life members of the LGBT community in Arab nations that have struggled to get their messages out to the international community are more than a bit upset that they haven't been heard over all the media hype MacMaster has been able to drum up through his dalliance in fiction writing.

"Abdallah" wasn't your typical unknown blogging hobbyist. After garnering enough attention in her responses to the uprisings she supposedly witnessed firsthand, she was commissioned to contribute to various news sites. She even had a facebook account, filled with pictures MacMaster had stolen from another facebook user, as well as fan pages on the social networking site (yes, pages plural). And when MacMaster was bored with his little fiction project, he conveniently implied in his posts that Amina Abdallah had gone missing and was abducted by security services, which of course only led to more support, and, one can imagine, more fan pages. The State Department was reportedly opening up an investigation as well.

I understand the anger surrounding this. Especially if you see this video of MacMaster explaining himself and how he was driven by vanity to create this character. At this point he is probably envisioning future book deals, talk show appearances, and a life of glamorous celebrityhood from here on out.

But before we're so quick to dismiss this as a cheap hoax devoid of any lessons to be learned, here's a question to consider: where do you get your news? And what are the sources for that news?

In America, the number of US-based foreign correspondents has only dwindled as our military reach has skyrocketed. Conversely, in countries where first amendment rights are not protected, particularly in the Middle East, informal means of communication such as blogging, twitter, and other social networks have become a major source of information for the global community. In these types of circumstances, is it a complete surprise that myths and lies can be perpetuated like never before?

There are no easy answers to fix this media environment, but if there is a cautionary tale here it's this: however enticing a wide open internet may be, blogs and social media will never replace a functioning media--that is, a media comprised of trained journalists, fact checkers, and editors that are neither beholden to government nor corporate institutions. Is such a thing possible? Probably not, but it is something to strive for.

Arab Women Challenge Western Media

CAIRO May 18, 2011 (Her Blueprint) – Though demonstrating, taking risks, mobilizing, suffering and standing side by side with men in the uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, Arab women are also challenging the Western media to acknowledge their voice.

From Tunisia, to Egypt, to Yemen and Morocco, women have been at the forefront of the Arab Spring revolutions.

Yemeni women, who represent a third of the thousands of anti-government protestors demanding an end to Ali Abdullah Saleh’s thirty-year rule, are shattering traditions that go back centuries.

“I myself came from a conservative family but my grandmother used to have more freedom in the way that she dressed, talked and dealt with men than I have now,” said Samia al-Haddad, Program and Human Rights Officer for the Yemeni Organization for Development and Rehabilitation in an interview with Her Blueprint.

According to al-Haddad, women’s rights became stifled after the 80’s.

“If you see the footage and the video coming from Yemen and you will see all women veiled in black and this was not the image of women in the 80’s before the expansion of Salafists and Wahabi movements came from Saudi Arabia.”

Hibaaq Osman from Somalia is the CEO and Founder of Karama. She says that the Western media was shocked to see women out on the streets, raising their voices, protesting for democracy and walking side by side with men for a unified cause – political reform and equal rights.

“You have to understand the psychology of the Western media. They want to see a weak, meek and covered woman,” Osman told Her Blueprint.

According to Osman, it’s about time that the West take a good look at themselves before pointing the finger.