Negotiating Hybridity in the Work of Lalla Essaydi: An Exploration of Gaze

• Main Author: Darrow, Susannah B
• Format: Others
• Published: Digital Archive @ GSU 2013
• Subjects: Lalla Essaydi; Hybridity; Gaze; Orientalism; Contemporary Middle Eastern art; Multiculturalism
• Online Access: http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/art_design_theses/137; http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1144&context=art_design_theses

The photographic work of contemporary Moroccan artist, Lalla Essaydi, embodies a new artistic hybridity that reflects her nomadic, globalized background. With this work, the artist employs visual symbolism and uses multiple forms of artistic media as a means to analyze her multicultural background. Throughout her series, which spans 2004-present, Essaydi uses both literal and metaphorical representations of space and self as a means to examine the multifacetedness of her national identity and the many gazes that define that identity. She uses artistic production as a means of mediating the collective experiences of her identity in order to negotiate and construct a revised image of self.