Sarah Bahbah: It took years to get to this place... The only way was to separate myself from everything I knew

As a Palestinian-Jordanian child growing up in suburban Perth in the 90s, Sarah Bahbah existed in a constant push-pull between the two worlds she inhabited, which ultimately left her feeling like she didn’t belong to either. She was too Western for the Arab world, having as a teenager started to explore the exciting world of her Australian peers after a strict upbringing which saw her contained to her very tight-knit, enormous family who all lived on the same street in Parkwood. Yet she was constantly made to feel she was too Arab for the Western world, bullied for her appearance during her early years of school and left with no doubt that she was an outsider. Now 29, Bahbah has carved out a space of her own, through art, which has led her on a journey of healing and transformation, and propelled her to wild international success. That success came via a rebellion against both her culturally conservative upbringing and the norms of the traditional art world, and she has created a niche with her cinematic, provocative and visually striking photo series, which explore her inner psyche as well as themes of relationships, intimacy, trauma and healing. Each series contains her trademark colour-saturated, dreamy stills which feature subtitle-like captions— poetic one-liners that Bahbah jots down when she’s experiencing emotional overwhelm. Released daily via Instagram to her more than one million followers, each series has gone viral and Bahbah has featured in international publications including The New York Times and Vogue. Sex and Takeout, the series which provided her big break, explores the indulgences of food and sex through images of naked people posing with food. Her most recent, and successful, work, Fool Me Twice, was released throughout April and stars Netflix actors Alisha Boe and Noah Centineo, in a narrative arc which explores the avoidant and anxious attachment relationship styles. And perhaps her most personal, 3eib!, which translates in Arabic to “shame!”’ — a term Bahbah became familiar with as she grew up — saw Bahbah become her own muse as she sifted through grief and trauma, stemming from child sexual abuse, mental health issues and a Xanax dependency. The result is a deeply personal and powerful series which not only healed Bahbah, but was met with an enormous worldwide reaction, particularly from Middle Eastern women who saw themselves in her work. Bahbah chatted with STM over video call last week from Los Angeles, where she also runs hugely successful content creation agency Possy, which has seen her work with Gucci, Sony Music, GQ and Capitol Records and produce music videos for Norwegian DJ Kygo, which have amassed more than 100 million views. She is living in Laurel Canyon, surrounded by trees which remind her of the Australian bush, and is herself surrounded by a close-knit group of creatives and friends. She feels she now has a “permanent grounding”, a significant state of mind for someone who has struggled to find her sense of belonging since she was a child. “I feel like it took years to get to this place. There was always the constant battle of not feeling like I had a space that was for me, and I always felt like I was in limbo,” she explains. “And I always felt like I didn’t have a solid identity because none of the spaces I was in were built for me, as a child of immigrant parents. “But I’m definitely there now. And I feel like the only way I found this space was to separate myself from everything that I knew. I had to create my own world and figure out who I was away from my family. And it did bring me so much closer to my roots because I actively made the choice to nurture my Arab identity as much as I did my Western one. I feel like I’ve created this space where I am both, and I’m not one or the other, I’m literally both of them.” Bahbah was born in Perth to Palestinian and Jordanian parents, who immigrated from Palestine in the 1980s. She is one of seven siblings and spent the early years of her life completely ensconced in the family unit, before — to the disappointment of some in her family — branching out during high school and university. She first picked up a camera in Year 11 and went on to study creative advertising, which she excelled at, at Curtin University. Bahbah moved to Melbourne in 2011 and worked in advertising, specialising in social media. In her spare time, she ran a blog, Raised by the Wolves, and developed a loyal following with her — at first unpaid — photographic series documenting musicians and crowds at music festivals. “I was always so present in the way that I worked that I did things because I really wanted to. It wasn’t with the ambition of making money,” she says. “It was the festival era that actually helped me refine my art skills, because I was going to these festivals for years just shooting hundreds and hundreds of photos of punters and musicians, but then I wanted to challenge myself, to be more refined in the process, because a lot of my followers started doing what I was doing.” So to distinguish herself, and stay ahead of the game, she would instead just take one, two or three photos across an entire festival, which encapsulated the experience. This series was called The Wild Ones. Shortly after this, in 2014, she released Sex and Takeout with a feeling of certainty — part gut feeling and part the knowledge she had gained through her job — that it was going to go viral. But initially, it didn’t. “I thought, I’m missing something. And so I waited until January 2015 and I planted an article on BuzzFeed community. The next morning, I woke up and it was viral,” she says. “I had to take the day off work, I had 50,000 new followers, hundreds of emails. I remember texting my boss and being like ‘hey, I don’t think I’m gonna make it’. He was like ‘I understand. Congratulations.’ It was literally everywhere. It was the most mind-blowing thing to wake up like that, with notoriety from every single publication. “I had spent every day trying to figure out how to make companies go viral, so it was like, I can do this for myself, let’s go. It made me realise that I had influence, and I could do great things. It motivated me to keep going and pushing myself further to create unique, relatable ideas.” It was one of the defining moments in her career, and she is proud that every year since has contained another such moment, or two. In addition to disrupting the art world by releasing her work through Instagram, she also operates a “pay what you can” initiative with prints from each series. “I was represented by a few galleries in my earlier years, but as my social media grew, and as years passed, I discovered that I was being exploited by some of the people who would represent me and as a young artist, to be taken advantage of, it was such a shock to the system and I felt very betrayed,” she says. “I was so motivated to make sure that never happened again. So I decided to democratise my art and instead of having the work priced for ridiculous amounts of dollars, I decided to make prints accessible to all.” She stills sell her original pieces to a small number of art collectors, and has supplied the Art Gallery of Western Australia three custom pieces which will form part of its upcoming The View from Here exhibition showcasing WA artists. “That’s such an incredible opportunity to be able to present in my home town, my OG fan base is there and this is an opportunity for people to finally go and see my work in person,” she says. Bahbah’s followers include Middle Eastern women who have reached out to tell her what 3eib! meant to them. “Simply by expressing my own story, and saying ‘this is how I dealt with my trauma’, people are like ‘this is so me, I feel this too’. Having people relate so heavily is a response that I never thought was possible,” she says. One fan wrote to her: “As an Irish-Saudi who grew up in the UK, I have often been told by my family to act one way and not the other because it will be considered 3eib by others. As well as non-Arabs telling me how I should be acting. And now, I just don’t care because it’s who I am. So thank you for breaking the wall down so beautifully and simply.” The provocative series features one-line phrases including “Please leave me alone so I can think in silence”, “I can’t tell if I’m not OK or I’m the best I’ve ever been” and “I’m my own muse”, all accompanied by subtitles in Arabic, as the project was aimed at reaching a Middle Eastern audience. Becoming her own muse was significant in Bahbah’s understanding of who she was. “That series was very liberating for me because I finally was able to sit with myself during the pandemic and figure out why it was that I didn’t believe I was worthy of being in front of the camera, and a lot of it did come back to my roots of being in Perth,” she says. “I realised it was because I didn’t grow up with anyone who looked like me on Australian TV. I was told by my peers I didn’t belong in those spaces and there was just so many beliefs that made me feel like I wasn’t worthy of being in front of the camera. “I spent the bulk of 2020 just doing the inner child work and going back and healing those beliefs, that I had based on what other people told me, and that really set me free. It ended up being so amazing, just by telling my story and actually attaching my physical identity to it really helped a lot of Middle Eastern women and children of immigrants. “It definitely makes me feel like I’m on the right path. I do feel like the universe often uses me as a portal, that I’ve been given these gifts because I’m supposed to help others by being my most authentic self, it kind of sounds selfish, but my priority is always working through my traumas and healing myself and focusing on that. And then by doing that, and then releasing it, it helps others.” But it’s not without a cost. Bahbah suffers significantly while writing each series, which require her to “hit the deepest wounds that I have, and sit with them for so long”. Fool Me Twice, created on the back of Bahbah having her heart broken “hopefully for the last time”, explores love, intimacy and heartbreak through the attachment and avoidant relationship styles. Bahbah had become enlightened by Amir Levine’s book, Attached. “I was grieving someone I cared deeply about and I’ve never had my mind blown so much. I’ve been doing therapy for years but I’d never heard about attachment theory. I feel like (Fool Me Twice) was exactly what everyone needed in that moment, after going through a year of being locked up (because of COVID-19) people were trying to make sense of their relationships.” Bahbah is now working on film and TV projects, as well as having a damn good time in the space she has worked so hard to create. When it comes to her family, she has something of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” understanding with her parents, and is unsure if they are aware of the extent of her success. “We just agree to disagree, I do things very differently to their belief systems, and as long as we don’t talk about it, we’re going to have a very wonderful relationship,” she says. But her relationship with herself, while always a work in progress, is the best it has ever been. “I am definitely in a good place. I feel like I have spent the past six years uncovering all my s.... There is always going to be s...; healing isn’t linear. But I’m in a very secure relationship with myself, and the people around me, and it’s healthy. It’s all healthy.” The View From Here, A celebration of Western Australian Art, opens at the Art Gallery of Western Australia on November 6.

Sarah Bahbah: It took years to get to this place... The only way was to separate myself from everything I knew

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