Bullet #11 2014

Lalla Essaydi created Bullet #11 with photography, working in the tradition of painting. Imagine how it might have felt for her to assemble this scene, to construct this fiction? I'm really drawn to the subtle palette. Essaydi seems to be creating a kind of immersive experience. I get the sense that she wanted to make a decorative, wallpaper-like surface. The figures are so present, and the way the artist has incorporated calligraphy feels like a painterly gesture, blurring the lines between representation and abstraction. It reminds me a little of Matisse and his odalisques, but with a twist. Both artists are interested in pattern and decoration, but Essaydi brings a more critical, feminist perspective to her work. There's a tension here, a feeling of both beauty and constraint, that makes the piece so compelling. It gives the work another level of meaning. Essaydi is in dialog with painting, and in doing so, she shows us new ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling.