28.09.2025 · Yumna Al-Arashi
Zurich, Switzerland
Yumna Al-Arashi is a Yemeni-Egyptian artist, filmmaker and writer whose work explores the intersection of history, identity and power.
With striking visual compositions, she retraces lost narratives, questions colonial legacies and redefines the representation of (Arab) women with a poetic gaze. Her images are saturated with myth and memory, drawing on centuries-old traditions while urgently touching on the struggles of the present. Through her lens, beauty becomes an act of resistance and storytelling a form of reclaiming.
We had a chat with Yumna about her latest project 'Aisha' and the process of creating her own counter-archive, made to endure.
Hi Yumna, thank you for taking the time to talk to us! Congratulations on the publication of your latest photo book titled ‘AISHA’. I discovered that the woman on the cover is your great-grandmother, Aisha, who inspired the title of the book. Beautiful! The book delves into the traditional practice of women’s tattoos across the SWANA-region. Flicking through the book, it becomes clear how much of yourself you have poured into it through photography but also in the form of writings and poems. Can you tell us how ‘AISHA’ came about?
Yumna Al-Arashi: Aisha was a response to the often violent representations of our ancestors in Western archives. I began my research in 2016 and found myself learning how the narrative around women’s stories were seized, controlled, and an extension of a colonial violence. My response was to begin the work of meeting and photographing women across North African landscapes, as access to Yemen was almost impossible during the war. The histories between both landscapes run deep, culturally and historically.
I read that you had dug deep in preparation for this book, e.g. working through archives at the British Library in London. What did it tell you about archives and the way the west sees the Global South? What’s something you learnt during this process?
YAA: I think ‘sees’ is too generous of a verb to use here. I think there’s a lack of vision. The conscript of which comes from the notion that a people can be folded into the notion of a definition, something flat which fits into a book. To categorize becomes an opening to control. To force people to fit into notions of how others perceive them isn’t seeing, it’s regulating, it’s controlling. This is what I learned. I learned the violence of an educational system imposed on people which was disguised as a means of liberation. The only people who became liberated were the colonizers. They became free to exploit others through a mass means of control.
"I never use my camera when I begin my work, it’s not even what I’m interested in doing.
The imagery comes much later in my process as much as possible, with anyone I work with, even myself. First is always the human connection, the trust, the understanding of what is happening and what we all want in unison."
Photos from "AISHA" by Yumna Al-Arashi
You mentioned how you have been traveling through North Africa for some months while working on ‘AISHA’, connecting with women from the region. The portraits you took are very intimate and raw, requiring quite some trust between the photographer and the person in front of the lens. The same goes for your vogue cover ‘Las Cholitas Escaladoras de Bolivia’, displaying the ‘Cholitas’, a community of indigenous women climbing the Anden mountains. How did you go about entering these spaces, especially of indigenous and marginalised communities, also while acknowledging your own position? Because even if it’s our own and somewhat familiar regions, having grown up in the west, we are not free from carrying an outsider’s gaze.
YAA: Yes, I’m very glad you mentioned this. There’s such a huge part of myself that needed to be confronted during the process of making this work, and making each work. That reflection must be transparent during the process of producing work about others, in my opinion. And even when the regions are “ours” we still may very much approach our gaze with a touch of violence, a desire to extract. And this is exactly what Aisha is about, in fact.
As a rule of thumb, I never use my camera when I begin my work, it’s not even what I’m interested in doing. The imagery comes much later in my process as much as possible, with anyone I work with, even myself. First is always the human connection, the trust, the understanding of what is happening and what we all want in unison. The tools come later.
Can you share your favorite memory from this journey?
YAA: I have so many. There were so many tender raw intimate moments. Moments which were not photographed but meant the world to me and those who I’d met along the way. This work really made me understand my greatest gift, which is my ability to be with others. There’s a magic that happens when I share space with people, an intimacy which is profound and which I hold so dear to my heart as a true gift to be used in this brief time I have on Earth.
I would love to dig a bit deeper into one of your earliest bodies of work ‘99 Names of God’ (2018), which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Looking at the piece now, what feelings does it evoke for you? What significance did it have for your artistic journey?
YAA: I hold sweetness for this work. It was so innocent, something that began a journey into filmmaking. It was my first film! Although maybe the work doesn’t resonate with me as an artist today, somehow it’s something the world seems to love, so I can accept the work in that regard.
"This disconnect from our home, our mother, is what has caused so much violence around us. How can we not understand that every bomb that drops, is air that we all must breathe, soil and water contaminated, is all one. So how must we move on when some are set out to destroy while others need to repair for generations to come?
We need to return, collectively."
In ‘99 Names of God’ there is a lot of emphasis on the earth and nature that surrounds us. Something that connects it with your other bodies of work, portraying a sense of serenity and sensualness. How do you engage with the very environment that surrounds you in your creative process? Does it feel spiritual to you?
YAA: Of course, I am nature, I am deeply connected to the world which surrounds me. We all are whether or not we choose to see it. That healing, that re-connection, is what must be happening in our world right now. This disconnect from our home, our mother, is what has caused so much violence around us. How can we not understand that every bomb that drops, is air that we all must breathe, soil and water contaminated, is all one. So how must we move on when some are set out to destroy while others need to repair for generations to come?
We need to return, collectively.
Growing up in the US as a Yemeni-Egyptian woman past 9/11, having some of your relatives being directly affected by the Trump administration and its travel bans - you have experienced your fair share of Islamophobia and white supremacy. How did this influence the way you share work that includes your faith - like ‘99 Names of God’?
YAA: It doesn’t influence the way I share my faith. Hate can’t touch that.
Read our other gaze interviews here!:
