ZimZam

The Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, New Jersey has a small, strange, and interesting collection of paintings, photographs, and sculptures. Currently on exhibition in the Special Exhibitions gallery is Lalla Essaydi's "Les Femmes du Maroc". The title of the show came from Delacroix's painting Les Femmes d'Algiers. Essaydi confronts many issues surrounding European Orientalist paintings of the 19th century by staging reconstructions of the paintings (in my opinion, both sexist and racist paintings) in photograph form.

Lalla Essaydi's process involves complex steps, and begins with her inspiration painting, in this case, the famous Ingres painting, "Grande Odalisque". The impossibly long and seemingly boneless figure takes up most of the field, with her luminescent skin. This painting is said to be an Orientalist painting, because of the inclusion of what seems to be a hookah, an inclosed space primarily for women (known as the Harem), and the fabric covering her hair. Essaydi's opinion is that this is all fabricated and objectifying, and she wishes to re-establish the truth of her Moroccan culture. She takes this painting and about 10 others and sets up scenes that are similar to this. She creates sets that she draws on with Henna, a dark brown paste applied to women's bodies for celebrations such as weddings. Not only is all the fabric in the scene covered in Henna, but the women that are in the scene are covered in it as well, from head to toe. She utilizes a form of calligraphy that is mostly used by men, and controversially writes passages from her journals onto the skin and fabric. She also designs and makes all of the clothing that is worn.

The pictures are meticulously set up, photographed, and printed. The are all made up of a neutral color scheme of greys, browns, and flesh tones. She choses to leave the film border on the pictures, which reminds the viewer that they are looking at a photograph, and to not get lost in the hypnotizing henna. The series plays on the idea of the male gaze of the Orientalist inspiration paintings; being that she is a female artist taking photographs of mostly females that are not objectifying, she is making a statement about her culture. Instead of placing the women in a Harem scene, she places them on a stage-like interior space that she created. There are no men within the scene, and none of the women are nude. They all seem to be asserting themselves as strong women that are not defined by their sexuality.


The other photography currently on view is Out of the Ordinary: Photography by Larry Clark and Gary WInogrand. The exhibit starts out with more mild photographs of women by Gary Winogrand, and slowly transitions into heavier subject matter surrounding violence and drugs by Larry Clark (mostly from the series 'Tulsa'). It was interesting to see the combination of different genre scenes, from the mild to the grotesque. I had a hard time staying in the same room as some of the portraits, because they were so shocking. However, I enjoyed that all of the photographs were meticulously taken and printed; they all had the same size and format, which unified the different subject matter.