Issue 01
may 2023
AL sarab
السراب
Edited by Ayah Darwich
A Zora Productions Zine
Graphic Design by Simone Wang
Acknowledgement of country
Zora productions acknowledges the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and future and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded. We are grateful for this platform to share art with each other in a place where indigenous people told stories many years ago.
Always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
al sarab
A letter from the editor
Zora Productions presents:
Al Sarab
السراب
Zora productions is a collective of POC inspiring change and diversity within Australian media by creating and sharing our art with each other. Our first zine includes photography, poetry and illustrations all based on the concept Al Sarab (السراب) meaning the mirage or illusion. I am beyond excited to feature the works of so many talented artists in this issue and grateful for the opportunity to foster community and representation.
Zora productions was started in 2021 with 5 friends who had the goal of making films about whatever we wanted in the sacred space we found with each other. I realised how special this was while making our first short film 'Abjection.' The feeling of working with solely POC women and non-binary creators was one that I had never experienced before and my ambition is to make these spaces more accessible to the people who need them.
As an artist I am really privileged to be able to pursue my passion. I grew up in Liverpool going to a all girls Muslim school where the women I know have distinct voices, personalities and are incredibly determined. Some of them are more talented, funnier and disciplined than me but were constantly told that there wasn't a place for them to do what they love in Australia. I always think about the amazing art we could have if we weren't taught to believe that our perspectives didn't matter. I think about the art we could have made if our countries weren't colonised, and the people we would be if we weren't taught subservience and assimilation. That is the space I hope to create.
01
Artists & Contributions
Ayesha Baig
Fatima Naqvi
Aysenur Kara
Angela Yarad
Marmi Alatipi
Zeynep Nevzat
Divya
01
02
03
06
08
10
11
al sarab
Nat Loos
Karen Leong
Vanessa Nilam
Ayla Yuyucuoglu
Amira Akhtar
Jessie Crossman
Tara Tajdini
Zeinab Mahfoud
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
life
A meant to be mine
Ayesha Baig
Lahore’s icy winds were made to stick to my bones, Its cool air was made to wrap comfort around my arms.
Here, summer at the beach is picturesque, but I lack the warmth of feeling safe.
The food produced from the villages was grown to revitalise my body,
The water of Lahore was meant to course through my veins and heal my traumas.
Here, cuisines are countless, but I need to have dinner in Auburn to feel the taste of home.
The antiques gathering dust in Lahore Fort were preserved for me to admire,
The rays of radiance shine on Sheesh Mahal so I could highlight myself with Pakistan’s history,
The palace in Shahi Qila was built with love for me to live in one day,
Not to visit as a tourist.
Fulfilling, chaotic breakfasts, Spending the entire day in amusement parks with cousins. And fighting over who won that game of Ludo in the middle of the night.
These experiences were meant to be consistent family fun days, not rarities.
Here, I have many friends, yet I find myself talking to the walls, and praying that my voice will reverberate into the laughter of my aunties and uncles.
The untold stories of my royal heritage were supposed to be shared through generations, not gentrified by non-desi authors to romanticise the British Raj.
Here, my belongings and my life resides,
but not my heart.
Don’t be disillusioned. Living in Australia, although stable, is a life lived with a gaping hole in the
shape of my family, my homeland, and the roots of my upbringing.
In Urdu, there is a word for extreme sorrow, a heavy grief of any sort; غم [gh-um].
غم is what I feel when that hole is triggered,
غم is what I feel when I remember how distant my entire family is from me,
and the infinite غم of every one of my ancestors weighs me down.
al sarab
01
Kawthar
Graphite drawing on paper
Kawthar is a drawing of a veil splayed out like a river. The artist compares rivers, making reference to their giving, nourishing and life sustaining nature, to the hijab, as an oasis which is abundant, warm and liberating. The artist also draws a broader reference to femininity, referencing the chapter “Kawthar” in the Quran, (Muslim holy book) which was revealed after the holy prophet Muhammad was ridiculed for not having any sons to continue his lineage. In a way, the chapter “Kawthar” honours feminine power, as it references the Prophets daughter Fatima and her work in going on to spread the message of Islam down many generations. “Kawthar” is the name of a river in paradise and it means “abundance”.
Fatima Naqvi
02
al sarab
al sarab
“Come to success”
حي علي الفلاح – حي علي الفلاح
Aysenur Kara
“Come to success" (excerpt from the call to prayer) is an installation that encapsulates my sense of place.
It conveys details of my identity, faith and experiences as an individual.
Through my process of experimentation, I chose to utilise the positions in prayer, I wanted to make this concept more universal by including a subtle persona within the cut outs, to reach a larger audience. The complexities of my culture, religion and nationality are further conveyed in a three-piece collage.
I have combined a haze of maps, photos and memories, layering Arabic words from the Quran over the images to showcase a greater level of importance on these theological attributes.
The words featured in my work include: Tawakkul (تَوَكُّل) meaning a perfect trust in god and his plan alone, Sabr (صَبْرٌ) meaning patience and endurance and Addaba (أدب) meaning discipline and refinement.
03
Under
Construction
Project 94
Aysenur Kara
“Under Construction” is a curated series of photographs apart of 'Project 94' that depicts the heritage and culture my immigrant family carries within them and it's impact upon the rest of us born here. Personally, aiding to transform my creative practice into what it is today. I pay homage to those that passed on these skills and traditions to women in my family that now teach them to me. Most importantly I made this with the aim of ensuring that these traditions and skills never end and are passed on to my children and their children’s children.
Project 94 is a personal project that I have been working on over the past year, that evaluates the people, culture, traditions and history that make my identity as a Australian Turk. Steering away from the commonly used narrative within the media, this series is not just about representation but also to help others understand that we are just like everyone else. That regardless of where we come from, we are all shaped by our family and our history.
Being a second generation from an immigrant family, has taught me many lessons but most importantly it has immensely informed my creative practice. For a long period of time I believed that my cultural and religious identity was something that hindered my creative ambitions. That my position in the creative world would lack significance because I didn’t meet the “standards” of the western art world. Despite this I chose to strive and as it turns out the answer had been within me this whole time.
Between the never-ending Turkish recipes from my aunts, my Babanne's endless folklore stories, her patience in weaving and stitching clothes for us, my mother’s relentless attitude to teach us Turkish and the first photoshop skills I learnt from my sister. The list is endless and the stories, skills and recipes continue to grow as I get older. This is potent in the series, because in my practice and self reflection; my art is always changing and growing. So when people ask my where or what inspires me to be an “artist". This is the answer.
al sarab
04
al sarab
Aysenur Kara
Under
Construction
Project 94
05
Angela Yarad
Mary never held me
I rocked myself
silently
never disturbing the women beside me.
I must breathe through whatever it is this anxiety
is trying to pull me away from
It will not consume me
though all signs point to my death
The destruction of the soul
is the act of giving into the fear
and the shame of the emptiness the following day.
So often I believe I will be placed among those greats
who were glorified for what they could have been
whose internal traumas were too much to handle for more than a decade of trying.
But I don’t want to run away like them
To a safe place they couldn’t find before,
Like the arms of Mary
Great sheets glistening
to the holy celestial white noise
of the cloaking
made blue for its richness of symbolism.
Shades of
Blue
al sarab
Sway me
like the golden incense
beneath candlelit domes of silence
holding nothing but steady bell tolls and soft murmurs
Blinding iconography.
These people could not have been so real
as to have walked the soil I have walked
It is why I am so removed from them
and why these war times make it impossible for me to know them
to travel to their space
or simply past my own caging landscape.
I wish to remove the soul out of this body
to another more adaptable to the needs of a wanderer,
So as to not relinquish a great love
for the body’s safety net –
the consistency of self-soothing
at the corner of my bed.
Anxious girl,
Stop robbing yourself the exploration of life
just because you think you’re not good enough
You’re the same as everybody else
blue with motherly melancholy,
I’ve never really known what you’ve been frightened of.
06
Angela Yarad
The
Seventh
Veil
They cannot make anything out of you
Which was not already there,
No structured marble
Chiselled to a David,
No glass frame
Or fine china to be displayed.
This daily pouring out of wasted energy
Of wasted life,
Which would be better used in something holier to your spirit,
May empty you
May kill you
But you will not die.
And if finally the moment comes
Where there be nothing left in you
Start again.
Remove this seventh veil
Find the nakedness of life
The simplicity of birth
Universally felt;
Perhaps the only equaliser.
The sidewalks of your city will not desert you,
Not the autumn leaves
Or the skyscraper trees
Nor the loneliness of these streets.
If there be nothing left in you
Return here
And start again.
al sarab
Perfection does not exist
And it was never bred in you;
Quit this constant seeking
Ploughing of your soul,
You cannot weed it out.
But go into a field of flowers
Tasting only earth for nutrients
Only flora for sustenance
And there, the glimmer of it lives,
A home in the valley
The lake between hills
Bordered by moss and isolation.
Waiting for you,
When there be nothing left in you
Calling to you, to start again.
07
al sarab
“O a’u o le Samoa”
Marmi Alatipi
08
al sarab
“I am Samoan”
In her work, "O a’u o le Samoa" ("I am Samoan"), Marmi creates a spectrum of tableau self- portraits reimagining images from colonial period Samoa; addressing the intersectionality in their identity as a sexually fluid, gender non-conforming, diasporic Afakasi ("half-caste"), to deepen their understanding and acceptance of self and origin. They pose as an Indigenous Samoan woman, a Scottish male settler, and as themselves - a queer afakasi navigating a modern world of western frameworks with indigenous beliefs.
Using self as both the creator and the subject matter, Marmi manifests a sense of ownership in each image in a provocative act of acknowledgement, empowerment and reclamation of cultural origin and identity. Their series introduces the genesis of a wider continuum of work that reclaims the narrative of Oceania from the archaic colonial perception that has confused our history and altered our culture, empowering our people with a contemporary celebration and representation of fluid indigenous identities and beliefs.
09
09
Holographic moon
Zeynep Nevzat
Blood blossoming on Kmart pyjama pants
Shadows rave behind her forehead
Her belly expands like
dough
Logging Day 1 of her cycle
on the tracking app
“Allow App to Access Your
Photos”?
Her eyes close as the
shadows mosh
She opens Instagram,
The lull of the Explore
feed drowns out the thumping of the shadow DJ
Her shaky fingers swipe
the camera open
A face of makeup and
plastic surgery switches from a ghost in her hair
To adorning her face
She looks like she has
someone else’s skin on her
She scrolls past a video
of a bomb, comments off.
Watches a lip synching video where the audio is a second behind,
Likes a photo of a galaxy with too
high a resolution,
al sarab
She visits a gallery
plastered with a girl who she thinks she met once in a tutorial;
Images of her uni grad,
Diploma held high.
Selfies at Observatory
Hill Park,
Upper Fort Street, Millers
Point 2000.
She gets an ad for crypto
trading
“Do not show ads like this”.
Her 2 year old phone is
heating up
She considers placing it
on her back
An alternative to the burnt tire smell of the heat pack
Stored with the detergent the cat insists on swimming in
That one infertility journey vlog on TikTok convinces her otherwise
So, she crawls out of bed heading to the shower
Shaking her hair of the lipsticked phantom
Remembering she had one last
painkiller in her wallet
That hasn’t seen coins and notes in years.
10
al sarab
Self portrait
Mixed media on canvas
by Divya
Through the exploration of Eastern philosophies, meditation and spiritual encounters, I have experienced the self to be an illusion. A perfectly curated construct which often keeps us trapped within our stories of pain and suffering. This work plays on my lack of identification with my face, superficially imposed here onto the rest of the work, that which actually feels like a truer expression of the worlds that exist within us all.
See no self
There’s a voice around,
In the space inside my head
It’s growing louder,
My cries are darker than they’ve ever been.
she says “you’re doing it wrong” “smile less” “act better”
But I can feel all of it looking up at me.
I’m on the pedestal of dirt. My Mother is Earth. She says close your eyes, you don’t need those to see.
I tried harder this time. Let the layers fall.
...
It’s a miracle that I can even breathe.
And then the others came, walking through the Sun
They said they knew me when my heart was born
It took a minute, but it finally clicked.
This is it. This is it.
And when the first rain fell, and the first bird flew. We smiled. Because we always knew.
11
Siren
by
al sarab
by Nat Loos
the Seaside
Siren by the Seaside is a three-piece photo series by Nat Loos. Sirens represent seduction, temptation and power and Karen’s piercing gaze is enough to lure anyone into the depths of the sea. Through these images, Nat reframes the depiction of women as subjects of gentle desire through the eyes of a queer woman.
12
al sarab
The idea of her floats inside
a prism - or holograph.
see panels? women too are moved
in herds or shards.
are
Up the ante
she swings, cuts herself on praise
a nose can be such an arch thing —
when her mother says hers straightened itself
out when driving straight into a pole.
What of the gaze, the sight, the beams?
to have eluded everyone on
a faceless whim
to make me out of a forsaken vain?
from the floor
where i’ve hemmed myself to ribbons
the balm of feeling plush
and pink.
my mother’s hand becomes
a sheet of silk
now my friends turn and ask through interlaced
fingers,
why mine are so softly uncarved
i am so nimble in my undoing
the juices slide down a screen
where her likeness glitches —-
stop shaking. you’ll make it worse
she is me when i am her
The idea of her floats inside
a prism - or holograph.
see panels? women too moved
in herds or shards.
are
Up the ante
she swings, cuts herself on praise
they are mooning over the
sight of her side because
a nose can be such an arch thing —
when her mother says hers straightened itself
out when driving straight into a pole.
from the floor
where i’ve hemmed myself to ribbons
the balm of feeling plush
and pink.
it is my mother’s hand that becomes
a sheet of silk
now my friends turn and ask through interlaced
fingers,
why mine are so softly uncarved
What of the gaze, the sight, the beams?
to have eluded everyone on
a faceless whim
What to make of a forsaken vain?
i am so nimble in my undoing
the juices slide down a screen
where her likeness glitches —-
stop shaking. you’ll make it worse
She is me when i am her
She
is me when i am her
Karen Leong
13
Is it too far ?
Vanessa Nilam
Love me or else
al sarab
These two images are different interpretations regarding the zine concept. My personal take is how we all have a facade that we show to the outside world, we have the control of distorting it, creating an illusion or an idea of what we'd like for people to see us as. However, with a spooky spin the longer we put on the facade the more it slowly affects you, and it starts to hurt you, posesses you, blurring the identity that we created with our actual character and mind.
14
al sarab
To Anneanne
Ayla Yuyucuoglu
You are not the universe, intricate as it is
You are not the glistening moon and stars
You are not the calm amongst all these racing cars
You are not walking art.
You are not the twinkle in everyone’s smile
You are not a rainbow stretched a mile
And you’re definitely not a unicorn.
You are so much more.
You are not the sunshine lighting every corner and crevice of my heart
You are not the joy I get browsing the arts and crafts section at Kmart
You are so much more.
You are not the feeling of sipping a warm cup of tea on a rainy Saturday
morning
You are not the angel in each and every rain drop when it’s pouring
You aren’t the roses that bloom when someone mentions your name
And you aren’t a picturesque image of the seaside in an old frame.
The truth is Anneanne, you are all these things combined and so muchmore.
*Anneanne translates to “my mother’s mother” in Turkish
Sen evren değilsin, olduğu gibi karmaşık
Sen parıldayan ay ve yıldızlar değilsin
Tüm bu yarış arabaların arasında sakin olan sen değilsin
Sen yürüyen sanat değilsin.
Herkesin gülümsemesindeki pırıltı sen değilsin
Sen bir mil uzayan bir gökkuşağı değilsin
Ve kesinlikle bir tek boynuzlu at değilsin.
Sen çok daha fazlasısın.
Kalbimin her köşesini ve yarığını aydınlatan güneş ışığı değilsin
Kmart'ta sanat ve el sanatları bölümüne göz atarken aldığım zevk sen değilsin
Sen çok daha fazlasısın.
Yağmurlu bir cumartesi sabahı sıcacık bir çay yudumlama hissi değilsiniz
Dökülen her yağmur damlasındaki melek sen değilsin
Biri adınızı söylediğinde açan güller değilsiniz
Ve sen eski bir çerçevedeki sahilin pitoresk görüntüsü değilsin.
Gerçek şu ki Anneanne, siz tüm bu şeylerin birleşimisiniz ve çok daha fazlasısınız.
15
al sarab
Run
Amira Akhtar
run
away
hurry
because you know this path
because your heart can still pound
because it’s tradition to abandon the life you know
you know,
for one where
you have a safe place
and you can afford days at home
and you can afford rehab
and you can afford milk
my body remembers more than i can ever say
and i don’t know how to tell you how much i wish
i could take everything
i need to run away because it’s what i know
it’s what has saved me
and you
and the women before
and the women to come
they say the hardest part is the first step
then everything comes easy
but
i’m tired
we’ve been running for a while
my heart feels like it’ll burst
i’m tired
my feet have blisters and sores
your socks have holes
i’m tired
my bones are carrying me at the command of another
i need to go
run
away
hurry
16
P
hoenixes in East Asian culture have been overlaid with the western symbol for rebirth enough times it's informally become part of the myth, and vice versa, western phoenixes now tend to sprout the pheasant and peacock tails common to Asian myth. It's a cross-cultural reference that feels seamless. Rebirth and regrowth is something I think about a lot, especially when I've been knocked down with a lot of reproductive health issues, gender confusion, and mixed race angst, and feel almost resentful about at times. Here I am at rock bottom and I have to get back out again - but I can't help but feel relieved that I still have chances to become, even if the effort involved is so difficult. The act of thanklessly getting back up again and again after getting knocked down feels queer, feels feminine, but I'm sure is a universal emotion in these turbulent times.
Get up
by Jessie Crossman
al sarab
17
al sarab
Rehma's
reflection
Tara Tajdini
Rehma's reflection is about hypnosis and honoring an increased state of relaxation. Rehmas image in the mirror is distorted, which hints directly at the topics of perspective and the subjectivity of reality.
18
al sarab
سرفيس أو سرفيسين ؟
Zeinab Mahfoud
I thought you would feel like opening my bedroom door after a long day.
I thought you would feel like crawling into my sister’s arms on a Sunday,
both acknowledging it’s been a rainy lazy day.
I thought you would feel like walking to my teta’s house while the 4 o’clock sun slightly caresses my body.
I thought you would feel like home.
I would learn the veins of your city, memorizing the road to your heart.
I would learn just because I see the sun outside, it doesn’t mean it’s warm.
I would learn the name of you lady who sells me groceries on the corner.
I would learn what home feels like.
19
AL sarab
السراب
