Lalla Essaydi

Challenging Stereotypes Through Her Own Narrative

Lalla Essaydi’s work emerges from a personal return to the spaces of her childhood in Morocco. She describes her practice as an attempt to “re-encounter the child I once was” to understand herself now!

• Reclaimed the narrative of Arab women.
• Uses photography, text, and silence.
• Turns the camera lens inward

In the world of art, where Arab women were often seen but rarely heard, Lalla Essaydi shifted the frame.

Born in Morocco, raised in Saudi Arabia, and educated in Paris and Boston. Essaydi bridges tradition and rebellion. Her work challenges how the West once portrayed women from the Arab world: passive, exotic, voiceless. Lalla Essaydi uses the female body, domestic space, and calligraphy to reclaim Arab women’s narratives from both cultural confinement and Western Orientalist fantasies, transforming them into powerful, self-authored expressions.

She responds by portraying them calmly. Precise. Photographic.

But these aren’t just photos. They’re constructed scenes. Every fabric, every pose, every stroke of Arabic calligraphy is placed by her and often written by her hand, over the skin of real women.

She uses calligraphy, once forbidden to women, as her tool to reclaim authorship. To write identity back onto the body.

Her message is clear:

You cannot stay a victim or accept a stereotype – you create your own voice.

Essaydi’s work demands understanding. She stepped into the frame and rewrote the story from within.