Courtesy of Sarah Bahbah
A few months after moving across the world from her small hometown of Perth, Australia, to the fabled city of Los Angeles, Sarah Bahbah found herself struggling. Overwhelmed by the superficiality of L.A. and without any real friends or sense of community, the then-24-year old was combatting a drug problem and an eating disorder, and she knew she needed to get better. Unsure of what else to do, Bahbah packed up her things and headed for the desert, where she planned to spend two weeks meditating, eating well, and getting sober.
She arrived at her Palm Springs rental and, exhausted from the drive, immediately fell asleep—but not long after dozing off, Bahbah awoke to tiny, little pinches all over her body. She turned on her phone’s flashlight to find that she was covered from head to toe in bed bugs. “I was alone in the middle of the desert, I didn’t know anyone, and it was nighttime, and it just triggered me in a way I’d never been triggered before,” Bahbah remembers. She felt invaded, and even after moving to a different rental, the door to her early-life traumas had been opened, and they all began racing back.
Long-repressed memories of her childhood soon flooded Bahbah’s mind, and she was reminded of her never-ending battle between the Arab traditions of her Palestinian and Jordanian parents and the modern realities of the western world that surrounded her. “Growing up in Australia was tough because at home, I was being raised one way, and in school, I was being westernized, so it was really hard for me to find a space where I felt like I fit in,” she says, “In the Arab world, I was too westernized, and in the white world, I was too Arab and conservative.” Matters were further complicated by the rampant sexual abuse and silencing she faced at the hands of her community, which made sexuality, an otherwise taboo subject in the Arab world, especially confusing to her.
For most of her life, Bahbah compartmentalized her pain and trauma. “I’d become so disassociated and dismissed my emotions entirely. Any time I tried to use my voice, I was told I was wrong, so I numbed myself through anxiety, and that became my coping mechanism,” she says. “But I felt like I just couldn’t live like that anymore and decided I had to change things.”
Bahbah gave herself until the end of 2016 to sober up, and she began seeing a therapist regularly. There, she stopped pushing away the painful happenings of her childhood and instead learned to address them head-on. “It wasn’t until that point that I allowed myself to tap into the reasons why I was so anxious and avoidant and constantly looking for escape,” she recalls. “I didn’t feel safe to just exist because the weight that I was carrying and that level of repression was so heavy that I couldn’t move forward. But I knew there was so much I wanted to do and that I had this purpose, so I decided that in order to do those things, I needed to look inwards.” Therapy allowed her to do just this, but it also helped her discover another method of expressing her emotions: through art.
Inspired by subtitled stills of French films, Bahbah started keeping lists of one-liners that came to mind as she grieved and unpacked her traumas, and they spoke to the flurry of emotions she was experiencing. With a vision of creating photos that resembled film—almost cinematic stills—and pasting her thoughts atop them, she began picturing specific images to go with each line and soon took to her camera to bring them to life. “Creating really helped me make sense of the chaos in my mind and organize it neatly—just being in my living room and looking at all my words and photos and knowing that’s how I needed to release the weight” the artist says. “In a way, my art almost became the homework for my therapy.”
Bahbah started sharing her work on Instagram, and when it went viral almost overnight, she realized that people weren’t just drawn to the effortlessly alluring aesthetic of her art but were also able to relate to it in a way she never imagined. “In this era of Instagram, everything is just so perfectly curated, and people really get to choose how they portray themselves online,” she notes. “So, I think the reason my work resonates so much is because I’m exposing myself and my flaws, vulnerabilities, and insecurities, and we don’t usually see that in this perfect curation. We’re all ultimately human, and whether we’re aware of it or not, we all want to feel seen and heard.”
Courtesy of Sarah Bahbah
Four years after her first series put her on the map, Bahbah has made several hundred iterations of her signature text-on-photo—or as some call it, “elegant meme”—creations, and she’s even joined forces with the likes of Kygo and Gucci for various projects. “All the series that I’ve ever created have come from such a deeply personal space,” she says. “It is all my words and my stories, and in most cases, it’s the things I wish I’d said or didn’t feel safe enough to express in the moment.” But even with her thoughts and feelings at the forefront of her work, the artist herself has always seemed to fade to the background as familiar faces like Dylan Sprouse and Noah Centineo take center stage in her creations.
This year, though, Bahbah started looking at things through a new lens. After spending the last few years focused on healing her deep-seeded traumas, she realized that although her work had always dealt with her experiences and emotions, it never truly tapped into Arab culture. “I really repressed it in order to exist safely in white spaces,” she says. But she felt it was finally time to change that.
“When I came to do this series, I asked myself why I’d never featured an Arab woman in my work before, and I realized that every Arab woman I’d asked always turned me down because they were too scared,” the artist notes. “With the weight of my words, it’s one thing to have a white or non-Arab person say these things, but when an Arab person, especially an Arab woman, says them, she’s putting herself at risk because she’s going against everything she’s been taught.” So, when Bahbah began thinking of how she could capture her journey of integrating the Arab and western worlds, she knew that she’d have to feature not only her words in her artwork but also her likeness. “Instead of just giving my heart and soul to the world, I’d also be giving my body and my face,” she says. “And I’d never done that before as an artist.”
Being in front of the camera presented a host of challenges to the artist, who long struggled with her appearance in the wake of childhood bullying and ‘other’ing over her dark skin, wavy hair, and curves, so she once again took to the desert to breakdown the origins of her insecurities. This time with friends (and no bed bugs), Bahbah spent a month in Palm Springs documenting the earliest beliefs she made about herself and her body, and after tracing each to an early trauma, she was able to build a new sense of confidence. “It was very challenging because I had to undo so many harsh beliefs I had about myself and the way I looked,” she explains. “And then on top of that, I had to figure out what these shots would look like and how I’d portray what I’m trying to say because it’s actually me saying it this time instead of using another person to express my thoughts.”
Courtesy of Sarah Bahbah
The images in this series stray from Bahbah’s previous work in more ways than just their subject, and with emotion and sexuality woven throughout the text, the series marries the Arab and western worlds above all else through language. “I usually only have my subtitles in English, but I wanted this to be able to reach the Arab world and have women see it and feel empowered by it too,” says the artist, who worked with translators to ensure fluidity. “So, I’m doing it for them predominantly. I want Arab women to see this and feel heard.”
The title of this series, ‘3eib,’ also carries undeniable significance. Meaning ‘shame’ in Arabic, the word ‘3eib’ was thrust against Bahbah whenever she acted against Arab culture, be it using her voice in an outspoken way or showing too much affection. “It was the automatic word used to silence us,” she explains. “So, the reason I’ve called this series ‘3eib’ is to claim my power back. There is going to be critical lashing from the Arab world—it’s almost guaranteed—and this is the weapon they’re going to use against me, so I thought I might as well own it.”
Courtesy of Sarah Bahbah
The nature of the series brought her usual process to a whole other level, and it’s taken Bahbah months to create the 32 images it features, but she suspects it hasn’t just been logistics that have stood in her way. “I know there are still a few things I need to do before I release it, but I also know that I probably won’t do those things,” she says, just two days before the planned release date. “One of those things is that I’m exposing myself to the world before I expose myself to my mum, and the subjects that I’m addressing in this series put me at risk of losing my mum because she’s going to be very disappointed and honestly completely heartbroken.” Previous work has been met with her mother’s disapproval, and Bahbah knows that ‘3eib,’ which puts not only the artist’s words on display but also her body, will likely tear her apart. “I think this is the thing that’s made me procrastinate the most,”she notes. “It’s not even that the Arab world might come after me, but the thing that stops me from wanting to release this is really what it will do to my mum.”
Despite fears of backlash, though, Bahbah will release ‘3eib’ on Monday, September 28, and she hopes it will help her nearly one million Instagram followers and her many fans beyond the platform to understand her struggle and her path to this point. “I really would love if they could see the work and understand the weight of the words I’m saying and understand that it’s different when an Arab woman says these things,” she says. “I want people to know that we’re women who’ve had restrictions and that for me, as an Arab woman who’s grown up in a western world, finding a space where I can feel liberated and express myself freely has been a fucking journey. This might cause chaos, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take because I really feel the need to embrace my identity in its entirety.”
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With Latest Series ‘3eib,’ Artist Sarah Bahbah Explores A Whole New Terrain: Herself - Forbes
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