Exposure Therapy

Though I have been practicing working with simple art mediums, making more impactful work always means returning to my roots. More recently, I have been creating drawings of character illustrations based on people from my life, such as my mother, sisters, and cousins. In this project, I make black and white, comic book-like drawings of relatable Arab characters. One of the characters, Mustafah, is a hundred-and-thirty-something-year-old gay Palestinian vampire pulled from a story I am writing called Exposure Therapy. His character is known for sharing stories from historic Palestine with his American-born millennial cousins who are curious about their roots. Mustafah Celebrates his 127th Birthday is a graphite portrait of him belly dancing and photoshopped onto a backdrop of a nightclub. Another endearing graphite portrait from this series is No Habibti, I cannot Judge you, Only God can judge you.  The portrait centers on Fatima, a middle-aged Arab woman, smoking in front of a Ross retail store. I incorporate my influences in this long-term illustration and story-writing project by visually developing character storylines. Exposure Therapy has allowed me to pull directly from familial personas and specific cultural references on a level I appreciate more than ever. With this, my conceptual focus has been on illustrating a relatable Palestinian experience, specifically for first-generation millennials and their displaced elders. I am currently utilizing social media to reach this audience by posting these drawings and providing captions that give a clever glimpse of the character’s perspective.