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.