Other artists for consideration --

LALLA ESSAYDI:
Lalla Essaydi is a Moroccan artist who has also lived in Saudi Arabia for many years. She is now living and working in New York City. She takes Islamic calligraphy, a sacred art form practiced only by men, and applies them with painstaking detail to female bodies to create images that call attention to the highly complex realities of Arab women. Furthermore, I love this artist because she addresses the concept of the fantasy of Arab women being objects of beauty and sexual pleasure-- a concept introduced into the Western world  through "Orientalist" paintings of the 19th century started by Ingres, Delacroix and Gerome-- in the 'contemporary framework" 2 centuries later, through a non-Western perspective. (Or a syncretic Eastern-Western perspective).  She takes motifs/compositional forms from these 19th-century Orientalist paintings, such as La Grand Odalisque by Ingres, and incorporates into her artwork for an entirely different and striking message about Arab women.

La Grande Odalisque by Ingres: 

La Grand Odalisque by Essaydi:

“In my art, I wish to present myself through multiple lenses — as artist, as Moroccan, as Saudi, as traditionalist, as Liberal, as Muslim. In short, I invite the viewer to resist stereotypes.” -Lalla Essaydi

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DEAN MONOGENIS:

sea's between us 2010

Sea's between us -- details

Through these acrylic paintings on wood, Dean Monogenis creates natural landscapes, with urban expansionism slowly creeping in and destroying what has been existing calmly and peacefully.
"Human effort seeks to both destroy and restore our vernacular landscapes, and in doing so creates a dense tapestry of chaotic and architectural patterning... These temporary byproducts, such as net covered buildings, delineated with scaffolding and Day-Glo orange gauze, reminds us of the temporal nature of architecture..."