Lalla Essaydi is a painter and photographer. Her work focuses on the Arab female identity in a 19th-century Orientalist style. She is well-known for hand-drawn Arabic calligraphy paintings done with henna on different types of surfaces, such as fabric, bodies, and even walls. Born and raised in Morocco, Essaydi lived in Saudi Arabia before relocating to the United States.

Iraqi Halim Al Karim’s works have an undeniable spiritual aspect to them. They exist to unit the hidden and revealed, light and darkness, and the material and ephemeral. Born in 1963 in Nafjat, Iraq. A graduate of Baghdad Academy of Fine Arts and Gerrit Reitveld Academy in Amsterdam, he lives and works in Colorado, U.S.A.

-Amelia Johnson Contemporary

Image: © Lalla Essaydi
Courtesy of the artist and Amelia Johnson Contemporary