Dancer Triptych 2008

Lalla Essaydi made this Dancer Triptych, well, I don’t know exactly when, but she's an artist who moves between photography and painting. It looks like Essaydi used a camera to freeze a moment of ephemeral movement. Look at the figure’s gesture, how she holds the cloth, almost like wings or a veil. I imagine Essaydi directing her model, trying to capture a particular sense of flow and tension. It must have taken a lot of attempts to get this just right. The way the cloth catches the light, the folds, the way it seems to float for a brief instance. It makes me think about Loie Fuller and other dancers who experimented with fabric. The triptych format—it evokes religious painting, but also a kind of stop-motion animation. It all adds up to a feeling of suspended time, and a meditation on beauty, transience, and the body. The Dancer Triptych is having a conversation with other artworks across time, inspiring new ways of seeing and feeling.