“Beyond Time and Beauty” was Lalla Essaydi’s first exhibition in Azerbaijan and followed her retrospective at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art in 2012-13. Bringing together works from across her career, the show featured her series Harem, Bullets, Converging Territories and Les Femmes du Maroc. Curated by Dina Nasser-Khadivi, the exhibition ran from 14 November 2013 to 14 January 2014 and was part of a growing programme of international contemporary art exhibitions at the Baku Museum of Modern Art facilitated by the not-for- profit organisation YARAT. The Baku Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) is a national museum of modern and contemporary art. Founded in 2009, the museum’s permanent collection houses key works from Azerbaijan’s avant-garde artists from the mid 20th century up to the present as well as works from European and American artists of key importance to Azerbaijani modernism, including Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, and Marc Chagall.
Because of my background in art, I was particularly interested in Dina’s innovative ideas for influencer outreach—they sparked some ideas of my own and left me with the sense that we’d make an excellent collaborative team. I was immediately inspired to work with her, and knew that collaborating with her in an exhibition, catalogue, and later a book, added value to work and my artistic career in general.Lalla Essaydi, Artist, based between New York and Marrakesh
