Women Writing

Lalla Essaydi's gorgeous and disturbing photographic exhibit, Reinventing the Spaces Within: The Images of Converging Territories currently hangs in the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts. Above is the center image, Night of the Henna. The other photos are of women against similar backgrounds of fabric inscribed with henna. In some, lettering adorns the women's faces and hands, all that can be seen of their henna-inscribed cloth-coverd bodies. In one photo, the woman appears to be inscribing the very fabric she is wearing. Here's the beginning of a translation of the Arabic script seen in Essaydi's photographs:

I am writing. I am writing on me, I am writing on her. The story began to be written the moment the present began. I am asking, how can I be simultaneously inside and out?

A meditation on the condition of Islamic women. [women writing]

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