Crossing boundaries and expanding ideas of physical
and social space are not new challenges for Essaydi,
as her lived experience spans divergent, locations, cultures,
and ideologies.
Moroccan born and raised, Essaydi became an artist after
relocating from Morocco to Saudi Arabia, then France, and
ultimately to the United States. This itinerant personal history
has afforded her the distance and means to explore the
varied dimensions of Muslim women's experiences based
on those of her own, and also to challenge the boundaries
that shaped her upbringing. She believes her work, with its
very intimate portrayal of Moroccan women and the private
spaces they inhabit, would not have been possible without
distance from her homeland.
Well-educated, well-traveled, and raised in a closely knit
family of means, Essaydi (b. 1956) enjoyed a privileged
and enriching childhood in Marrakesh, Morocco, in a
traditional Muslim household that included relatively private
spaces reserved for women. Within these spaces, women
led animated lives among extended family and friends.
She has spent much of her life in the Muslim world, where
women were expected to maintain traditional gender roles
as daughters, sisters, and ultimately as wives and mothers.
She followed this path for many years, first as a daughter
in Morocco and later as wife and mother in Saudi Arabia,
where she raised her family.
In 1990 Essaydi broke from the conventions of her upbringing
as she embarked upon an independent path in her personal
and professional lives. She began a career as an artist
when, as an adult, she moved to France to attend the École
des Beaux-Arts (1992-1994) where she studied painting.
She then attended art schools in the United States, earning
a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tufts University (1999) and a
Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston, and Tufts University (2003). During the course
of these continuing art studies, in the 1990s, she began
working with photography, her current medium of choice.
Now based in New York and her hometown, Marrakesh, she
also returns regularly to Saudi Arabia where she lived for
many years.
Her art, which often combines Islamic calligraphy with
representations of the female form, addresses the complex
reality of Arab female identity from the unique perspective
of personal experience. In much of her work, she returns
to her Moroccan girlhood, looking back on it as an adult
woman caught somewhere between past and present, and
as an artist exploring the language in which to "speak" from
this uncertain space. Her work often appropriate Orientalist
imagery from the Western painting tradition, thereby inviting
viewers to reconsider the Orientalist mythology. She has
worked in numerous media, including painting, video, film,
mixed-media installation, and analog photography.