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Veiled and Va-va-voom: These Angels Bring Biker Bling Down To Earth

  • February 23, 2014
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Photo Credit: Hassan Hajjaj with Taymour Grahne Gallery
Photo Credit: Hassan Hajjaj with Taymour Grahne Gallery
Photo Credit: Hassan Hajjaj with Taymour Grahne Gallery
Photo Credit: Hassan Hajjaj with Taymour Grahne Gallery
Photo Credit: Hassan Hajjaj with Taymour Grahne Gallery
Photo Credit: Hassan Hajjaj with Taymour Grahne Gallery
Photo Credit: Hassan Hajjaj with Taymour Grahne Gallery
Photo Credit: Hassan Hajjaj with Taymour Grahne Gallery

Which of these phrases doesn’t go with the others: veiled women, working moms, or biker divas?

If you picked the third, one look at ‘Kesh Angels shows that the choice is false: the women it portrays are all of the above. Now on display at Taymour Grahne Gallery in New York, the latest installation by Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj is a tribute to the “strength, swagger, and freedom” of Marrakesh’s female bikers.

These angels, though, are down to earth. They’re not supermodels, they’re Hajjaj’s friends, and the bikes they pose on are mostly their own. But in their own way they are superwomen: they speak four or five languages, work eight or ten hour days, and commute–like nearly everybody–on motorbikes.

Yes, these women are veiled—in sassy polka dots and witty prints, including knock-off Louis Vuitton—plus smug Lolita-style sunglasses. Hajjaj fashioned the outfits himself, and framed the portrait in brightly painted tire treads and rows of homely cans and tins, as a tongue-in-cheek celebration of locality in a global mix.

The hybrid fusion is a signature of Hajjaj’s work, but it’s also a playful rebuttal to a fashion shoot he once attended in which everything was imported from the west, and Morocco itself “was simply the backdrop”, he recalls. So in this piece, he says, “I want to show something particular to Marrakesh, and that even though we have different cultures and religions, we share a lot in common as people.”

For more info – ‘Kesh Angels page

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Jennifer MacKenzie

Poet, writer and teacher Jennifer MacKenzie grew up on Bloomcrest Dr. in Bloomfield Hills, MI, which inspired her to wonder about places with patterns other than floral. Following her education at Wesleyan University's College of Letters and the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop, she followed a zig-zag course that included a pilgrimage across the top of Spain and a long sojourn in Syria in pursuit of the language of Muhammad al-Maghout and Moudthaffar al-Nawwab. While in Damascus she completed the books of poems "Distant City" and "My Not-My Soldier" (forthcoming from Fence Books) and edited the magazine Syria Today. Her poems and essays can be found in numerous journals including the Kenyon Review online, Guernica, Quarterly West, and Lungfull. She currently lives in New York.

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