“Sarah Takes a Selfie”
Inkjet on Silk / C-Type Print, 30 x 40cm
Photograph & Silk scarves by: Nathan Ross Davis
Modeling by: Sarah Elawad

Oppositional identities are stabilized by the perception of difference. Whatever cracks in this facade may arise are minimized by the desire to hold on to one’s own stable position within the relationship. As a designer and professor in the Gulf, teaching young muslim women the values of Western design ideology, we live a daily dialectic exchange, where we hold the past, the traditional, the conservative, the negation of the female image alongside the completely contemporary phenomenon of hyper self-awareness, social digital identity, social critique and flexible gender identity.”

“As we collaborate, we find ourselves surrounded in all directions by inconsistencies and contradictions that neither can be, nor ask to be solved. The contradictions require us to allow them to coexist, and so we continue without rational explanation. This irrational daily dialog of lives is a condition that we explore alongside our acceptance of it. There are few venues in our region for outright criticism and critical dialog, but between the lines of conversation, while we celebrate our differences, we are also interrogating the truth of our apparently oppositional identities which we inherited before our meeting. It is a productive act, it destabilizes our assumptions, and builds new ones. It proposes an alternative future, it is quiet but monumental.