Lalla Essaydi (b. 1956)

Lalla Essaydi (b. 1956) is a Moroccan-born artist and photographer whose work critiques the Western gaze of Orientalism. She is known for her elaborate photographs of Arab women in traditional settings, whose bodies and surroundings are covered in script written in henna. This technique challenges the historic exclusion of women from calligraphy (historically a male domain) and reclaims the image of the Arab woman from a passive, exoticized subject to a powerful figure writing her own narrative. Essaydi’s work, which blends photography, painting, and calligraphy, has been exhibited internationally and is held in the permanent collections of major museums, including the Louvre in Paris and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.