BINT AL ARAB

2020

Unraveled Cotton Piping and Dye

5’ x 3.5’

Striding towards empowerment and agency within the hybridity of Identity, I’ve recreated and altered the image of BINT AL ARAB with symbols and words to reflect my intersectional experience as the daughter of an Arab. 

“BINT AL ARAB” Is inspired by a real rice bag from the now defunct “Bint Al Arab” brand. Acting as a hyper object, this rice bag and design is an important motif in my life, especially growing up in a small Midwestern city, largely isolated from mainstream Arab and Islamic culture. Finding any non-orientalist interpretations of my heritage and religion was a challenge. BINT AL ARAB (Daughter of Arabs/ Arab Girl) became a huge influence in my life through its simple yet provocative logo design. The original logo features a flat, 1 color block print of woman in Niqab, staring off to the left and avoiding the viewers gaze, perhaps out of disinterest, bashfulness, or because she’s simply in her own world. This image had me fixated and admiring her presence the day she surfaced in my life. Invoking a similar feeling of questioning that the Mona Lisa many on her admirers, I would gaze at Bint Al Arab and wonder, “What’s on her mind? How is she feeling?”

Displaying her presence as a centerpiece in my collection from an early age, she was one of the few icons I could relate to in ethno-religious sentiment's, from a non-western narrative. She became a mirror on which I reflected my identity. Appropriating the original rice bag design, I have altered her likeness to reflect my experience of living in the liminal space between culture, religion and sexuality in a series of woven portraits.