"3eib! What will people think?" - Sarah Bahbah's journey to liberation

"I grew up with so much guilt and shame for wanting to embody my sexuality and my identity, but I never really had a space where I fit into"

Image from Sarah’s latest series, 3eib — Image from Sarah’s latest series, *3eib*

Words by Sunayah Arshad & Evar Hussayni

Interview by Sunayah Arshad

“I’m sorry to my mother and Allah for the things I have done tomorrow” reads the first visual of the new series ‘3eib’ that’s circulated social media for the past two months. Sarah Bahbah, the artist behind the photographs, has promised herself to live boldly as she reclaims her voice and shares her journey with the world. Embracing her identity as a Western Arab, she stands up against the stigma of culture-based shame that has kept her from being her true self. We speak to her about this journey and her endeavours to own all her desires, indulgences and temptations.

Influenced by culture, religion and tradition, shame is a feeling that’s regularly expressed in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA). When we believe we’ve violated a societal norm or have done something that we’ve been taught is wrong, yet we did it, felt it, desired it anyway, we feel shame. When we fail to adhere to cultural (often patriarchal) standards, we are shamed. It’s usually expressed with extreme disapproval and felt through guilt, embarrassment, fear and regret. ‘What will people think?’ is a sentence frequently heard, used as a method to restrict, silence and belittle womxn. Contemplating our own experiences with shame, we connect over shared moments of rebellion in our teens, finding ourselves at bus stops, public toilets and friends' houses removing the layers of parent-approved clothes that we felt were too modest. Whether we stay out too late, say the wrong thing, wear something too short, pursue a career against our parents’ wishes, laugh too loud in front of a male, lose our temper, fall in love with the wrong person - the risk of being shamed is always there. It’s a battle that comes with the longing to feel liberated.

Disproportionately, shame affects womxn more. It’s often used as a political tool to condition us into social propriety. It can be weaponised to suppress womxn and more often than not, it’s related to our sexuality and desires. The MENASA region sometimes takes the concept of shame so seriously that it leads to some awful consequences, including acts of violence such as revenge, honour killings or suicide, which are often considered the appropriate way to remove shame and restore honour.

Growing up in a predominantly-White, Western space while living in a traditional, ethnic household is a common experience shared throughout the diaspora. We’re repeatedly beckoned by a chance to fit in with our peers, yet governed by our parents beliefs, resulting in a conflicting pull from both sides. In a bid to please the two worlds, many of us spent our teens adopting and surviving a dual identity. However, the customs passed down by our elders are often so deeply ingrained, that as young children, any opposing thoughts or actions are commonly shrouded by shame, guilt or fear. For some, these feelings may pass, for others they may last a lifetime.

Raised in a Christian, Arab household in Perth, Australia, Sarah Bahbah is no stranger to feeling in-between. “I was born in Australia, but in terms of my household and my surroundings, my parents didn’t really acclimate. They very much maintained the culture from Jordan and Palestine”. As one of seven children, Sarah describes how they were raised strictly and conservatively at home, yet raised ‘Western’ at school. The constant switch between the two worlds is so heavily influenced by society, that many young children in Western spaces opt to fit in with the side they believe is safer; “It took 24 years of my life to learn just how whitewashed I became and how much I repressed my identity in order to exist safely in White spaces,” she acknowledges, “Especially after 9/11, people really turned on anyone who was brown, or Arab. I didn’t feel safe to walk around and tell people I was Arab, because Australia is so fucking colonised, its so White.”

When we suppress our feelings for a long period of time, we run the risk of generating both physical and mental stress. These feelings naturally transcend into our daily lives and are projected through emotional ‘explosions’ - often anger towards a particular subject. For many young womxn who are conditioned as a result of cultural ideologies, anger is frequently induced towards said culture. From the screaming matches with our mothers, countless death stares, slammed doors and threats to run away, we’re reminded of times when our emotions got the best of us. Whether it was publicly declaring that we’ll never marry a man from our culture (or marry at all) to secretly getting the tattoos and piercings we were never allowed, our attempts to distance ourselves from our own roots stemmed from a place of suffocation and frustration.

“It took 24 years of my life to learn just how whitewashed I became and how much I repressed my identity in order to exist safely in White spaces”

After 20 long years of observing her parents’ morals while questioning her own identity, Sarah left Perth and relocated to Melbourne, before settling in LA at 24 years old. “I realised that everything I’ve been told wasn’t working for me and was limiting me. I didn't feel like I could be myself or my own...The guilt that comes with abandoning your parents’ beliefs, it’s really hard, cause you do exist with so much shame. You feel like you’re doing something wrong simply by going against their norm.” Reflecting on her experience leaving home, Sarah admits that she didn’t know how to exist freely away from her family and spent the next four years repressing her identity even further. Feeling a sense of guilt and shame for even wanting to rebel, she confesses to creating multiple bad habits, which served as her coping mechanism.

Upon moving to LA, Sarah took herself straight into therapy, confirming that it helped her to fully turn her life around. “It was funny cause after I did the work, I went back to wanting to embrace my identity as an Arab, but before there was just so much anger around it.” While considering how she managed to navigate any feelings of disconnection and confusion surrounding her identity, Sarah touches on the importance of giving yourself time. “If you don’t truly understand the beliefs you’ve made about yourself, then they’re always going to subconsciously take over. It takes a lot of introspective therapy, talking about it, unpacking it and learning where the core belief came from and why you can’t let it leave essentially.”

While living in Melbourne, Sarah released a series of photos titled Sex and Takeout, exploring indulgences without shame or restraint. To her surprise, the images blew up overnight on social media, resulting in her swiftly becoming recognised as an established artist. Inspired by old foreign films, she began to incorporate subtitles into her cinematic images, providing a narrative behind each shot. Her body of work captures the intimate, yet universal thoughts shared by many with reference to themes of love, trauma and sexuality to name a few. Through her large social presence, it’s evident how well her emotionally transparent art resonates with people on a global level.

In 2018, Sarah released a visual poem I Could Not Protect Her, reflecting on the sexual abuse she experienced as a young girl. Using the same cinematic storytelling techniques, she addresses the predators of her experience. We sense her despise towards the abuser’s actions, yet equally witness a desire for approval. For many of us that experience trauma, we naturally compartmentalise our thoughts and emotions only to later discover that this may result in more damage. Sarah however, has developed a way to approach and process her experiences via her art, instead challenging her trauma. “My entire body of work has come from deeply rooted trauma. When you experience such heavy trauma as a child, there’s so many ways you learn to cope, but for me it was anxiety and numbing. I grew up as a very apathetic teenager and adult.” The poem closes with the line “I could not protect her, because I could not protect myself”, a haunting yet relatable line which lays bare the stigma attached to truth-telling and vulnerability in such situations.

Describing her creative process, it becomes clear how heavily emotional and extreme the journey is for her, “I’ll be completely fine, unattached and dissociated from everything for 6 months and then all of a sudden I'll feel everything at once. It's in those moments that I have to lean into my art, so I have an outlet. Any art series I've ever created has come from a place of giving myself permission to just feel.” Tapping into these isolated moments of creativity, Sarah builds a safe space where she can express herself with complete transparency. She continuously works towards manifesting a freedom for herself. A freedom from violence, fear and shame.

It’s through this freedom, that her latest project is born. Titled 3eib (‘shame’ in Arabic), this project is a blunt yet sincere series of self-portraits. Since focusing solely on her art, Sarah has released multiple photo projects that each centre a particular muse, until now. We first saw a glimpse of the new series circulating social media. Emblazoned with her signature subtitles such as “Bring me knafeh and sex” and “Heartbreak. It’s nothing I haven't survived before”, we laughed at their honesty and similarity to some of our own concealed thoughts. 3eib is an assertion of everything Sarah has experienced over the past 28 years, as she dismantles the harsh beliefs she had about herself, and gives herself permission to exist truthfully. “It’s me coming into my own and fully embracing my identity as a Western Arab. I grew up with so much guilt and shame for wanting to embody my sexuality and my identity, but I never really had a space where I fit into”.

By challenging her feelings, her outlook on herself has also renewed. “I’ve always hid away from the camera because of the beliefs I had about myself and my relationship with my body. This was the first time where I was like, ‘what is it about the way I look that I'm so afraid of people seeing, what makes me believe that I’m not worthy enough to be in front of the camera?’”. When your identity and sexuality have been unwillingly repressed, it’s not uncommon to be consumed by feelings of self-loathing and self-doubt. Sarah’s journey is a reminder of the impact ‘shame’ has, and the importance of working to overcome these feelings, to accept and love yourself. “Me asserting myself into my work was my way of being like ‘fuck every negative belief you’ve ever made about yourself, you are beautiful, you are worthy, you deserve to tell your story as your own’.” Recognising this personal projection as her initial objective for the series, Sarah touches on using her experiences to give other Arab womxn a voice. While her art brings to light a necessary conversation, she realises that her circumstances don’t translate to the lives of many others. “I can only speak to being a Western Arab. My experiences are very much privileged in comparison to womxn in the Middle East, who have completely different circumstances. I understand and I recognise that.” Recounting some messages of encouragement and empathy she has received, Sarah stresses the importance of uniting to liberate ourselves, assert our voices, embrace our sexuality and desires. Though we ourselves haven’t yet made it to the land of liberty, we take on Sarah’s bravery and hope to equally one day feel emancipated from shame - until then, we’ll probably continue to rebel in our own unique ways.

Continuing her efforts to expose, redefine and embrace traditionally ‘negative’ terms, Sarah plans to venture into the fashion sphere with the launch of her new sweat suit brand, Lazy Cake. A true Sagittarius, she represents a shifting mindset of our generation, affirming that “Lazy is a feeling just as much as anything else. We should be able to give ourselves permission to rest and recover, eat what we want and do nothing for a day if we feel like it, cause that’s what’s gonna help us be our best selves.” Reflecting on her personal experiences with pejoratives like ‘lazy’ and ‘shame’, she attempts to rebrand them for the better. What may once have been used to dismiss, humiliate and silence are finally being rewritten to influence a positive change.

To see more from 3eib and support Sarah’s latest venture Lazy Cake, visit her website here and follow @sarahbahbah