Sara Gulamali and the Art of Skewing Pop Culture
The other week we told you about the Muslim Sisterhood, a photo series aiming to reposition the cultural narratives surrounding British Muslim women (and show how unapologetically brilliant they are).
The project is the work of three very talented creative forces: Lamisa Khan, the photographer, and artists Zeinab Saleh and Sara Gulamali. While the Muslim Sisterhood Instagram gave us immediate exposure to Khan’s work, we wanted to know more about Saleh and Gulamali. So we clicked through to their IGs.
We soon realised the pair needed their own Ummahsonic features. We’re starting with Gulamali, but a blog on Saleh will follow later in the week.
Gulamali, who goes by Sara G on Instagram, is a UAL/Central Saint Martins BA Fine Art student. She creates striking, mixed-media images that embrace the candy-coated sorbet colour palettes of social media while skewering familiar pieces of pop culture.
Take this Mean Girls masterpiece, which – bear with us, here – casts sectarianism in deservedly harsh relief by funneling it through the misguided rulebook of notorious Hollywood bullies. Or as Sara G herself says: ‘Using humour and mean girls to deal with my minority anxiety.’
In fact, Sara G’s art is incredibly effective at positioning heavier IRL issues within the fleeting nature of digital, well, stuff. We really like the way she gives a Photobooth side-eye and a knowing fire emoji to these barbed words, which, sadly, are the kind of thing many hijabis might have had shouted at them in public:
Here are a few other images of Sara G’s that we love. As you’ll notice, most of our faves feature pleasingly jarring collisions of tradition, pop culture, big brands and digital aesthetics:
If you like what you see be sure to go and give Sara G a follow.
Saleh is adept at taking a more traditional Middle Eastern form, like calligraphy, and positioning it on an incongruous object or space.
Things We Should Ban Instead of the Veil’ includes stuff like cigarettes, early morning alarms and…raisin cookies?
The project's main aim is to show the diversity of Islam.
