Meet Yumna Al-Arashi

Yumna Al-Arashi is a writer and photographer, whose recent work has sought to give a voice to Muslim women, with the hope of ending the stereotypes of oppression that are culturally entrenched in their visual representations. Yumna’s latest project will be a series of photos in the traditional bath houses, or hammams, of North Africa and the Middle East. Through her photography and writing, she seeks to give women a voice, and encourage them to take up space. Find out more about her inspirations, aspirations and project below…

It's a continuation of a series of work that I've been doing lately, focused around the Muslim woman, and this project is going to be a series of photos in the traditional bath houses of North Africa and the Middle East called hammams. I want to be showing these as social spaces for women, and I’m trying to recreate the scenes that I've experienced there for my whole life. A lot of this scene was depicted in old art and it was very apparent that women did have public spaces and they existed in other realms aside from just mother, sister or wife. They were social creatures and they still are. It’s just the only imagery of the Muslim woman you see is that of oppression. I'm really interested in ending that.

I've made an effort to create a body of work that truly represents the Muslim woman outside of being oppressed. I feel as though I'm building a puzzle and adding all of the pieces as I go along in time. There's a huge importance for me to take each story that I do and create a larger story of understanding the Muslim woman. I want people to normalise this – they take up just as much space as anybody else and it’s really important to show that, and I'm really excited to be doing that with ASOS.

When I was 13 years old. It all started with blogging on LiveJournal. I had a bunch of internet friends and I felt really alone a lot when I was growing up in Washington D.C. because 9/11 had just happened and previously I didn't ever identify as anything other than American. Pre 9/11, you never saw yourself as different, even if your parents were born somewhere else. Everyone is the kid of an immigrant in America. 9/11 happened when I was in middle school and I felt super-alone. Having the internet was a really safe space for me – I could find people that I knew who understood me, and I could express myself the way that I wanted to without anybody being able to put a label on me. I was taking photos just for fun and then it started to get pretty interesting, so I started experimenting a lot. I did a lot of self portraiture and it grew into something. The internet was the way I could test out these mediums of writing and also a way of learning about myself and learning my voice and developing this person that I am today. I’m trying to create the momentum to have that voice and turn it back around and show them that this is not just a Muslim artist – this is a person, too, and we can be normal and we can create all the things that we're creating. It doesn't matter where we're from.

Being comfortable with who I am. I think that that has taken a really long time for me – and once I really grasped that and really loved myself, everything began to fall into place. Once you are fully comfortable in your own skin, with your voice and what you want to do, it will just happen. 

You need to fully embrace all your weird attributes. You need to be 100% yourself and not try to conform to what you see in your social circles, and you just need to completely love every inch of all of the weirdness about you, because that's going to make you succeed in life and make you stand out from everyone else. Also, take some time and really disconnect. It’s the most wonderful thing to not look at your phone for a full day or not really care about social media. Go outside! Take time away from the internet – and this is coming from the biggest internet nerd ever. That's the path to most of my inspiration and that's the reason why I'm sane.