"Hassan
Hajjaj, who was born in Morocco and is based in London, is a master of
several design genres, including furniture, fashion, interiors and
record-album covers. Over the past decade, he has synthesized them, and
more, into dazzling photo-portraits that are dynamic transcultural
documents. The images depict a distinctive subculture of young Moroccan
women who work as henna tattoo artists and traverse the city of
Marrakesh on motorbikes. They pose against brightly colored, sometimes
patterned backgrounds, straddling or lounging on their bikes with
evident pride and ease, wearing veils and abayas of an unusually lively
sort (that are either of the tattoo artists’ own or Mr. Hajjaj’s
design).
These ensembles
are insouciant mixes of old and new, East and West, global and local,
foreign and familiar. They combine, say, polka dots and camouflage with
slippers that use trademark Gucci fabrics or the occasional Nike swoosh.
Other fabrics are printed with Arabic script, flowers or spiky leaves.
They bring to mind the women in Mughal painting, but also exotic action
figures.
Adding
to the visual richness are frames whose small niches hold cans of
tomatoes, Spam, car wax or soda, all labeled in Arabic. Items that the
women might buy, these local variations on familiar commodities
contribute additional colors and patterns to the proceedings. Mr.
Hajjaj’s images belong to a history of studio photography that stretches
from the medium’s beginnings to the present, while building on the
works of sub-Saharan photographers like Malick Sidibé,
who also placed his subjects before signifying backdrops. They riff on
Matisse’s odalisques, Jeff Koons’s basketball ads and fashion
photography as well, all filtered through the lens of a different,
indisputably contemporary culture."
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