Moroccan born photographer Lalla Essaydi (1956- ), whose portraits of Arab women incorporate layers of Islamic calligraphy applied by hand with henna on the women’s bodies and clothing, is representative of a new artistic reclamation movement that positions her art outside the contested frames of nation and religion. Combined with poses directly inspired by nineteenth century Orientalist paintings of Jean Ingres, Jean Gérôme and Eugène Delacrois, Essaydi’s portraits are both provocative and revolutionary. Her world-wide installations relocate Muslim gendered bodies in ways that contest earlier orientalist depictions as well as Pierre Cachia’s modernist claims of a “faintness of Islamic inspiration,” thereby engendering a dialogue and a recasting of the Arab nation and its citizens in global locales. Essaydi’s work thrives on the disruption of visual and ideological stereotypes created through an intense engagement with contradictions of present and past, private and public spaces, and the oral and the written in Islamic cultures. The reclamation of private harem spaces, traditionally places of female confinement, is accomplished through an active engagement of her models in creating their own written history by inscribing their henna script on their veils, bodies, garments, and even the backdrop composition. Moreover, her interrogation of the intersections of religion and nationalism incriminates both local and global politics. My readings of Essaydi’s portraits will be informed by Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1993) and Marianne Hirsch’s Family Frames (1997). I articulate the ways in which the “umbilical” connection to the mother tongue, to native culture, to “first-and second generation remembrance, memory and postmemory” are invoked in Essaydi’s works by recasting the harem and the veil in a nuanced, anti-national way. In my research, I plan to compare her visual interrogation of Muslim culture with other Arab women writers such as the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi, and the Arab-American poet Mohja Kahf whose prosaic and poetic portrayal of Muslim women’s representations in Western culture complements Essaydi’s pictures. The fascinating aspect of Essaydi’s artistry originates from the stretching of personal and cultural borders, thereby relocating politics through the “intersection with the presence and absence of boundaries; of history, gender, architecture, and culture; that mark spaces of possibility and limitation.” Situating Essaydi’s artwork in the context of her fellow Arab women writers articulates her role as an active member of a vibrant Muslim women’s movement intent on bridging discordant cultures by initiating a much needed, though often, uncomfortable dialogue.