Maha Alasaker and Nada Faris

Maha Alasaker & Nada Faris

Women of Kuwait

Hard Cover
96 pages
2019
Daylight Books

From the artist:

As a woman born and raised in the Middle East, I had to accept cultural norms and traditions as they were, without question. That did not resonate with me. From my perspective, I always witnessed traditions outweighing religion. I was always amazed by the impact of culture and religion on members of my society, especially myself and other women. Living in a small country, where everyone knows one another. Where thoughts and beliefs were always discussed over a cup of coffee. This makes me wonder who I will be if I was born in a different place. Through my artwork, I’m trying to have a deeper understanding of myself. My artwork attempts to engage with issues of identity and culture. I’m curious about the meaning of being a female based on my upbringing. I explore these matters through my visual arts practice, working with a variety of mediums from photography, video to embroidery.

Photographs by Maha Alasaker
Foreword by Lulu Al-Sabah
Contributions by Nada Faris 

Book review by Dana Stirling |

I was born and raised in Israel. A country in the middle east not too far away from Kuwait.
The Middle East is an intense geographical location. It is always in the news, there are always opinions, and everyone always jumps in with their own political agenda. I feel like sometimes people forget the people who actually live in these places. They are not a political pawn, they are people with rich cultures, unique traditions and yes, also conflict and love all at the same time.

I was hesitant to write a book review about a place and traditions I know and don’t know at the same time. Am I too far away from it? Am I the wrong person? Yet, I am, in some ways, Middle Eastern. I was raised there, even though my origins are Ashkenazi European Jewish. I feel like maybe I am the polar opposite, but am I really? I am a woman. I am a woman within cultural identity that I don’t always relate to and struggled to find myself within the location I grew up in. I could identify with their words about the search for a “deeper understanding of myself”. In the end, I don’t think we are just what we seem on the surface, and art is something that can connect us beyond those surface level identifiers.

So, after that, I think it’s more important that I talk about the book itself.
I wanted to start with the cover. When I first saw the book was when I met Maha in person and she showed it to me at Portland Oregon during a small book fair at Blue Sky Gallery as part of the Photolucida Portfolio Review event. I was drawn to that beautifully crafted gold lettering. We spoke about the designer and how it came to be, and it seemed to play a large part in the book design. I think it makes the book that much more special. I felt like looking at tradition, at the traditional cloth and the typography that is so unique to the Arabic language.

In this book, Maha photographs women only, giving a voice to them as they often are not heard and given a chance to tell their stories from their perspectives.  For each photograph and portrait, she has the name of the woman and a story. For me many times in portrait photography, people become almost like still life within the frame, they become something we photograph, and their humanity, story and name are not always present. By creating the book in this way, she is putting their identity in the front and the photograph becomes the documentation to their words.

A big element in the project, is the fact that these women are all photographed in their bedrooms. This room is probably one of the most intimate spaces we occupy in a house. It is where you are vulnerable. People’s personal spaces are always very telling about who they are as people, but as more public spaces such as a living room or kitchen, where you anticipate other to see, your bedroom is a space that not everyone sees and the way you decorate it, or what objects it holds are personal in their own way. I think the choice of documenting these rooms is a part of the search of the artist to understand womanhood within the modern culture of Kuwait.

The book feels like a combination of self-search and identity and at the same time it plays a rule in an Anthropological study of

What women look like, feel like, dress like at that moment in time and space. Because of the use of typological photography, having similar factors within the different people, it enhances what people might have in common and what is unique about them all within the same country and time of history.

I can’t talk about what Maha and Nada might have learned or gained from the book, but I can talk about myself.

For me, I could relate to many of these women in some way or another. We can share the same pain, struggles, dreams and hopes even though we are different from one another, from different background and languages. I think the power of this work is it not only gives these women a platform to share, but it bridges the gaps we have within our different cultures and countries. Bringing back the similarities we share as humans walking the same planet while understanding and embracing other’s differences and walks of live.

I hope you bring yourself to get a copy of this book – you will not be disappointed.