When we started working on this issue, I knew it needed to have more teeth and be a lot more cognitive compared to Issue 00, which was a lot more about soul. It’s a fucking excellent issue of Dazed MENA, if I may say so myself. The entire team did such a fantastic job. It’s elegant, radical, and quite tongue-in-cheek. I was very much obsessed with this idea of iconography and how much of the visual language I – along with many others – grew up consuming largely emanated from America; how deeply Americana is woven into our overall consumption, not just ideologically, but also visually. There’s a Wendy’s drive-thru next to the beach here in Dubai, which I’ve always found quite fascinating. It really got me thinking about logos, symbols, and the meanings we attach to images and people. Especially in today’s climate, where the BDS movement has become part of the global lexicon, where a platform like TikTok is being banned in the US because it’s a Chinese-owned platform, and where Trump was trolling us with that awful AI-generated video of Gaza.

I also started thinking a lot about how the American flag has such layered meaning today, and how flags from Palestine, Sudan, and Congo are now coming to represent many of the things the American flag supposedly stands for, at least in popular culture.

The fashion shoots themselves are also incredibly layered with meaning and context. Take the Nora Attal shoot, for example, which was shot in Sahara el Beyda, Egypt’s white desert. In many ways, that’s a visual trope very much ingrained in the grand theatre of image-making that’s placed on the region. In that sense, I feel that cover and the incredible story somewhat flip that on its head. I wanted the issue to feel like a sub-sonic version of Grace Jones’ version of “La vie en rose”, which is itself a cover.

Every time we work on an issue, there’s this approach that really informs my thinking: each issue is a visual album of sorts. That’s why the image-makers in this issue are so incredibly important. I believe the artists who shot stories, along with the artists featured in the issue, all speak to this very notion of iconography. Mohamed Bourouissa, for example, is such an important artist of our time. Pairing him with Alek Wek might seem like a straightforward fashion and jewellery shoot, but it’s also layered. I’ve worked with Mohamed before, and I visited his show last year at the Palais de Tokyo. This shoot holds significance because it brings together two monumental figures from the worlds of fashion and art.

I hope this issue encourages people continue questioning. As a magazine, it’s never really about us being particularly definitive, which I guess goes against what a magazine is meant to do

So much of this issue is about the image-makers themselves, rather than just the subjects. In fact, the issue was a way to canonise the likes of Ilyes Griyeb, Mohamed Bourouissa, Bilal El-Kadhi, Pegah Farahmand and Abdelhamid Kircher – as image-makers with heritage across the region while interrogating the work they produce. That said, it’s also an opportunity to canonise these image-makers – many of whom are from across the region — without necessarily speaking about the region in the most obvious sense. Chndy’s story with Stone Island on dune-bashing is a sparkling example of this. It’s such an acceleration of Chndy’s body of work as an artist. He has been the preeminent iconographer of visual culture within the GCC.

I also wanted the issue to challenge the idea of identity politics which are placed on us and which we place on ourselves. That’s exactly why it was so important for us to shoot Willy Chavarria, but also have Daniel Arnold – who’s largely known for his encyclopedia of New York – to shoot Mohammed El-Kurd in New York where he is based.

I’m particularly proud of Mohammed, who is the ultimate anti-symbol symbol in many ways. Mohammed is such an important figure for me, my team, our generation, and he represents much of what this issue is about. I’m also proud of the incredible roster of artists and auteurs we've packed into this issue: Bilal El Kahdi, Pegah Farahmand, Mohamed Bourouissa, Illyes Griyeb, Chndy, Abdulhamid Kircher, Myriam Boulous, Martine Syms, Willy Chavarria, Farah Al Qasimi, Daniel Arnold, Jabbar, and Akram Zaatari.

I hope this issue encourages people continue questioning. As a magazine, it’s never really about us being particularly definitive, which I guess goes against what a magazine is meant to do. Ultimately, we just want to always give people something to think about.

ALEX WEK

“Alek Wek has always been an icon for me, so to feature her in this issue is everything, especially shot by someone as brilliant as Mohamed Bourouissa. Together they’ve created the magnum opus of this issue.” – Sarra Alayyan, Deputy Editor

NORA

MALIKA

MOHAMMED EL-KURD

WILLY CHAVARRIA 

BIJI (lead image)

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