- Title
- Rhokaya
- Date Made
- 2010
- Medium
- Dye coupler print
- Dimensions
- 78 3/4 × 49 1/16 × 1 in. (200.03 × 124.62 × 2.54 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2016.1.2
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Middle East: Contemporary
- Curatorial Notes
In her series Giants (2007–10), Maïmouna Guerresi photographed mostly friends and family members to create superhuman characters
whose monumental forms merge with architectural spaces and black voids. The statuesque figure of Rhokaya wears a brightly colored layered robe—a costume Guerressi made herself with materials collected from her travels—which seemingly envelopes an empty cavity that contradicts the subject’s corporeality. Inspired by the Muridiyya of Senegal, the Sufi order to which Guerresi belongs, these mystical beings (who she often refers to as spirit guides) take on a dual nature, both physical and metaphysical, human and divine.
Guerresi was born in Italy as Patrizia Guerresi and changed her name in 1991, when she converted to Sufi Islam. Her hybrid
background frames the vision of her artistic practice as she imagines a global community that crosses the bounds of cultural and
physical differences. Guerresi identifies as a Muslim feminist and relies on Islamic symbolism to communicate a universal spirituality.
Also, from the same series see Akbar (M.2016.1.1).
- Selected Bibliography
- Komaroff, Linda, Stephanie Rouinfar, Sandra Williams, and Sarah Mostafa Ahmed. Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023. https://archive.org/details/women-defining-women (accessed January 12, 2024).
