Muslim Sisterhood is a collective focusing on the misrepresentation of Muslim women in fashion. Muslim sisterhood was formed due to the lack of imagery that represents the reality for Muslim women who are interested in streetwear. A photography project has been created to document these looks.
Muslim Sisterhood consists of Sara Gulamali, a recent BA Fine Art graduate from Central Saint Martins, Zeinab Saleh, who is also a recent graduate from BA Fine Art at The Slade School of Fine Art, and Lamisa Khan, who studied International Relations at London School of Economics and will soon be starting her Masters in Gender Studies with a Middle East pathway.
They are holding an exhibition and launch party on July 23rd, celebrating the launch of their zine which releases in collaboration with Between Borders, a platform designed to host inclusive conversations and narratives regarding what ‘Britishness’ means today.
In the build-up to this milestone, I met up with the young women from Muslim Sisterhood at a photography studio ahead of one of their shoots for the upcoming zine to speak to them about their past, present and future. They were kind enough to invite me into their space to capture behind the scenes of how they create and prepare themselves for a shoot. Read our conversation below.
How did you all meet?
Zeinab:
We all met on Instagram. Lamisa slid into my DM’s and she was telling me about an idea that she had for photoshoots with Muslim women and I always wanted to shoot Muslim women. I had a vision of shooting Muslim women with neon lights in a kebab shop in a futuristic kinda look. I’ve done a project with Sara called “Variant Space” which is an Art Collective providing a platform for Muslim Women Artists.
Lamisa:
I basically saw their pictures in Adidas tracksuits and sliders and I thought it was sick so I messaged Zeinab telling her that I have this idea and I want to see Muslim women in streetwear. This is how it all started out because we dress like boys and I think a lot of the time Muslim women that are shown in media or in fashion in a brandy, high-end and boujee look and we couldn’t really relate to this image. Even with bloggers it’s all glamorous, airy and breezy looking and most of the time I’m actually in my Air Forces. I just needed to see an image that I could relate to and feel validated that I’m as Muslim as anybody else. So when I saw those images of Zeinab and Sara taking over phone booths and bus stands in New York, I thought it was sick so I contacted them. At the time I was working for Amaliah which is a publishing for Muslim women and I invited them into the offices and asked them what they wanted to see and do. At first it was only us and our friends walking along Brick Lane in the rain, in clothes borrowed from our brothers, dads and friends just so we could change hoodies in the corner shop.
Sara:
We started from there, we knew what aesthetic and look we wanted to achieve. We knew the style we liked and we knew what was authentic to us. This is where we could start performing questions and conversations around these images that became more than just aesthetics, it became political as well. We started talking to people about gentrification, about the Muslim community and the representation of Muslim women. It was really nice that through our work, creatively we have also been able to do something important for our community.
What is Muslim Sisterhood right now? Where is it going?
Lamisa:
So we are all in an in between stage at the moment. Sara is moving to Canada in July so we are at this stage where we don’t know what we want to do with this. Initially it was a photography series but we didn’t realise it would get so much attention and we didn’t think we would be doing half of the things we have been in general. We were not even going to make Instagram.
Sara:
This is not we were expecting but we have honestly done this for ourselves and the fact that we have been able to reach the point where we have connected with so many people and it’s become more than just images, we have built a community. We have been able to spark many discussions and I’ve honestly become not just a better photographer, artist or creative through this but also a better person. Before I have met these two, only had one Muslim friend. I didn’t know any Muslim girls, I didn’t have any in school with me and I didn’t have this community and I felt like I didn’t belong in my Mosque and I felt judged over there and I didn’t know where to go to find like-minded people. Through this experience, I’ve met a whole group and it’s been so refreshing to feel validated and everything that you felt you were alone in.
Lamisa:
…and not being validated by Western gaze. Just like Sara, I grew up in a very white area and I didn’t have any Muslim friends that were not boys and I never fitted with Muslim girls because I was a coconut. I’ve just remembered when I first got my nose pierced at school, I was told that “Ew you got it done on the Indian side” and I was like “I am actually brown, how can you say that…”
Zeinab:
It wasn’t just things like this happening when I was growing up, it’s the things you would see on TV. There was this one episode of Tracey Beaker where there was a Muslim girl and I was like “Omg this is so cool, she’s a Muslim girl.” I was disappointed with her character as she was made out to be evil and arrived on a space ship during the episode, she was wearing a green hijab and they’ve made her seem like an alien throughout the whole episode. That was my first experience of seeing Muslim representation on British TV and what it told me was that we were aliens and we were the ‘other.’ It was gross seeing that within the media but in school it was a safe space as I was mainly surrounded by Muslim people and I never had to question my own identity until I got to an Art school as it is usually very white.
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Lamisa:
For us, it was about creating a community rather than working with people external to our community. We just wanted to work with Muslim girls and we are so lucky that it got to the point where we have whole shoots with studios for free and with make-up artists, videographers, models who are all Muslim. All these girls want to work with us from the goodness of their hearts.
Zeinab:
It’s about sharing resources, I’m at Slade so I have access to a photo studio so we are going to use it. Make-up artists come work with us because they support the project and there’s nothing monetarily transactional about it. It’s about creating content that we all need.
Lamisa:
I think it would be nice to just continue where we are right now and do more community based work and we want to do workshops in schools because we feel like it’s important to start talking about representation when you’re younger because those are the struggles that we had to face. Kids are now much luckier now because they do see people who look like them more often on TV than we did.
Zeinab:
Halima Aden has done some amazing things as a hijab-wearing Somali model. I do feel like our community and our creativity has been co-opted a lot with these branded campaigns. Zara are putting hijabs on white models and making it “an aesthetic”. But if you saw that on Muslim women, you would have negative views and it is really about questioning what all these companies are doing. Eventually, it’s about financial capital and it’s about taking our cultural capital and making money out of it. Especially if they don’t accept us in our society or accept certain model’s view and they get taken out of campaigns because of their views. They’re trying to show that they’re inclusive, when really they’re not. That’s why we have created something outside of that space.
Lamisa:
I don’t think many Muslim people have access to creative industries because our cultures can be quite insular as many of us come from immigrant backgrounds. Yes, our religion is quite conservative and we have to protect ourselves; we don’t really make it into creative industry because those spaces are not spaces created with us in mind and rarely do they cater for us. It’s about creating spaces where Muslim women feel comfortable and also creating spaces where people can come to see that we are not what you’ve imagined us to be.
Sara:
It is about making this kind of content accessible because I feel like before I met you guys when I was doing my Art Foundation, I didn’t know where to find this stuff because I couldn’t see it anywhere. All the mainstream media and wherever else I was looking, I couldn’t see my community of people who were doing stuff and I just thought ‘Muslims are not really doing anything or Muslims don’t have the platform.’ Once I’ve started entering the space and meeting people then I found that there’s so many people doing amazing things but why can’t I see it? I just think for a younger version of myself who might be looking for that and trying to find this community of people but struggling to find it, that’s why I think it’s so important to make our stuff accessible. It’s been really exciting doing things for V&A or at Tate.
Zeinab:
These museums are still not very accessible to minority communities. They still don’t feel like they belong there hence why they try to do all of these nights like ‘Late at V&A’ or ‘Late at Tate’ to bring those communities in so it’s really important for us that we are sharing our content on Instagram which is often so much more accessible than these galleries.
Lamisa:
It goes back to representation. The thing is a lot of Muslim people come from low income backgrounds so they don’t have as much cultural capital off the back of not having financial capital. Coming into London on a train to go to the British Museum to see stolen artefacts, doesn’t have the same impact as seeing people who look like them creating work. This has been really important to what we’ve been doing because this work isn’t for a White Western gaze, it’s for US. I think in the future it would be really nice to carry on creating our community and also having access to create more opportunities for people like us in the industry because it’s just so inaccessible right now.
Can you tell me a bit about your upcoming collaboration with Between Borders?
Zeinab:
Me and Sara are in our final year at university and doing our degree shows so Lamisa has been amazing and organised so much that not even I could do the amount of work that she’s doing and it’s incredible.
Lamisa:
We are collaborating with Luc from Between Borders. One of my friends, little Zeinab pitched us to him and he reached out asking if we should just make a zine together. We’ve been thinking about making a zine for ages but we didn’t have the time or the confidence. We are creating a zine which will launch in July. That’s what we’re shooting for at the moment and we have a roll of film to finish. We’ve been shooting with a lot of girls to create some beautiful content and people are writing for us. Everyone who is working on the team and contributing is Muslim and it’s amazing. We are working with people that I have been following on Instagram and have been in love with since forever. We have worked with an artist called Nourie, who is an illustrator from UAE who has done things with Nike and Gucci. She’s amazing and I even have her number now. She’s making illustrations for our goodie bags. We also have this wonderful lady called Noreen Khan who has designed our new logo. She’s a designer based in New York but she grew up in London. People are helping us out from the goodness of their heart and it’s just such an honour that they think our project is worthy of their work. Maria Maleh has also been a huge support on this project.
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Sara:
It’s definitely been a team effort to keep this project going and I think it’s going to be a really nice feeling to kind of round off this year and this chapter with us all being together in a space and celebrating everything that we have all done so far because we cannot take the full credit. We have just kind of facilitated the outcome but actually it’s been everyone’s help, time and talent has made this possible.
Zeinab:
This project would be nothing without the help of models…
Lamisa:
They’ve all been volunteers, none of them are actual models. They’re girls who felt comfortable with us and being shot by us. It’s a privilege because some of these girls never post pictures of themselves, so for them to come and actually get their make-up done and sit in-front of a camera is amazing.
Sara:
We are dealing with everyday girls, who wouldn’t necessary be comfortable with being in-front of camera with anyone else. They trust us with that and it’s a very special feeling. A celebration of everything that we have achieved and especially that me and Zeinab are finishing university and we’ll be moving on with the chapters of our lives and Lamisa is going back to university so she’s going to be real busy so it feels like this is the best time to celebrate and then the next step…we don’t really know what that’s going to be.
Lamisa:
We never really knew our next steps…everything has just kind of happened for us and we are lucky that we have never had to reach out for opportunities, they’ve kind of found a way to us.
You can donate to their project here
