Sekka Magazine Explores Arab Womanhood in the Arts

Nagham Khader is a 23-year-old Jordanian photographer of Palestinian origin. She recently shared her latest photography series, Out of Her Father’s House, on Instagram. The series, the title of which is derived from a traditional Arabic wedding procession (zaffah) song, is composed of eight photographs that narrate the story of a woman as she goes through the stages of a traditional marriage, which usually begins when a suitor’s mother and female relatives makes a home visit to meet the prospective bride and her family, and, if a match is made, concludes with a wedding ceremony that jubilantly celebrates the marriage. Only in Nagham’s final photographs, the bride ends up being unhappy in her own wedding as she is surrounded by two women from the groom’s side who look at her with resentment and disappointment, seemingly unhappy with the choice of wife.

Arab women in the filmmaking industry are leaving their mark on the world. They have won or been nominated for some of the most prestigious international awards. Like Twenty Impossibles (2003), by Palestinian filmmaker Anne Marie Jacir, was the first Arab short film to enter an official selection at the Cannes International Film Festival. In the past three years, Lebanese Nadine Labaki, Syrian Waad al-Kateab, British Palestinian Farah Nabulsi and Tunisians Kaouther Ben Hania and Meryam Joobeur all were nominated for Oscars. 

Mous Lamrabat believes in pushing the narrative by ‘placing things where they don’t belong.’ Lamrabat’s signature style combines his North African and Moroccan heritage with Western or pop culture aesthetics. Some of his instantly recognisable work includes female silhouettes amid a monotonous, nondescript desert landscape, but they are wearing brightly coloured djellabas [a kaftan style worn in Morocco] with the Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls logos. The caption reads, ‘Mountain Goats,’ alluding to basketball icons Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan. ‘It’s just who I am,’ says the Belgium-based photographer. ‘I like putting things where they don’t belong, and this [contrast] makes things interesting.’

22-year-old Emirati Fatema Al Fardan didn’t always think she would grow up to be an artist. In fact, because she went to a science-oriented high school, she never thought she would study anything but engineering, despite the fact that she was obsessed with documenting people events on campus through photography for the school’s newsletter. Flash-forward five years later, after studying at New York University Abu Dhabi, where a photography class made her realize that photography can be more than a hobby and led her to double-major in visual arts and economics. Fatema Al Fardan is amongst the UAE’s newest and most promising multidisciplinary emerging artists, who showcased her work in the Middle East Institute’s Art Gallery’s 2020 online art exhibition Art in Isolation: Creativity in the Time of Covid-19, and is currently showcasing her photography series, We Dance Asynchronously on the Same Stage, at Abu Dhabi’s Warehouse 421 as part of the ongoing group exhibition, Mina Zayed:Reflections on Past Futures.

Like other Arab Gulf States, Bahrain has undergone a rapid process of modernization over the last 100 years. But that has not stopped the new generations from embracing the past and celebrating it in their own creative ways. Fatima Dashty is one such millennial. Using her Canon R Mirrorless Camera, the 30-year-old self-taught photographer has been capturing and recreating scenes that depict the Kingdom’s traditional ways of life, as well as customary, religious and national celebrations like Gergaon, Eid and Bahraini National Day, for the last seven years.