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Samar Younes
EIP: When did you first start using AI for your art and what was your introduction? What was your initial inspiration into the AI art world?
SAMAR: My embrace of AI emerged from a delicious paradox – physical limitations pushing me toward digital liberation. After years of crafting immersive installations with an almost obsessive tactility, health challenges and breast cancer forced a pivot in my artistic practice, teaching me to find beauty in mutation and imperfection as well as seek new digital artistic expression tools. The emergence of universe-building across physical and digital worlds and Web3 furthered my gravitation toward using AI, transforming it from mere computational tool into a digital djinn. This helped manifest visions my body sometimes couldn’t and introduced a digital sensibility that was missing in a space typically inundated with dystopian aesthetics and Western-centric views of the future. In seeking to transcend corporeal constraints, I discovered a medium that deepened my connection to embodied wisdom and ancestral knowledge systems, creating portals for reimagining cultural futures beyond colonial frameworks.
EIP: Did you ever do other forms of artistic expression prior to AI?
SAMAR: My practice dissolves disciplinary boundaries, seeing architecture as wearable art, fashion as inhabitable space, and storytelling as architectural form. From ALBA where I studied architecture, interior and visual communication in Beirut to Central Saint Martins where I studied Scenography and Narrative Environments in London, I developed languages for reimagining reality through environments, art, fashion, design and visual storytelling. For over two decades, I’ve transformed retail environments into cultural provocations - from sustainable sculptural interventions spanning 400+ stores worldwide to pioneering omnichannel narratives. As Global Visual Environments Director at Coach and Artistic Display Director at Anthropologie, I centered material manipulation and modular design, the use of recycled materials with an artisanal rigor that challenged luxury’s colonial gaze a decade before sustainability became fashionable. This trajectory from tactile manipulation to AI’s computational flexibility reflects a consistent ethos: challenging systems while amplifying cultural memory and resilience. Now, as Chief Imagination Officer at SAMARITUAL and mentor at NEW INC, I craft brand universes that honor ancestral intelligence while building post-binary futures. AI amplified rather than replaced this trajectory, becoming another strand in my hybrid practice where I leverage deep ethno-aesthetic acumen and artistic direction savoir-faire to merge artisanal intelligence with quantum craft.
EIP: How do you program or train AI to avoid cultural insensitivity or misinterpretations of Middle Eastern themes?
SAMAR: Rather than viewing AI as a potential threat to cultural authenticity, I see it as a medium for cultural regeneration. Through IMAGINAOLGY, my hybrid future edu lab, I’ve developed methodologies for circumventing AI’s orientalist gaze, deeply dissecting authorship, autonomy, and aesthetic biases. We treat archives not as static repositories but as living media for reimagining futures – where preserving stories becomes as crucial as preserving ecosystems. The goal isn’t to perfect processes but to rewild them, teaching others how to bend these tools away from their embedded biases about the Global South. My methodology creates conditions for cultural innovation rather than imposing limitations, treating computational ethnography as speculative fiction where every generation reinterprets their inheritance without losing its essence.
EIP: How can your art medium be used to preserve and reinterpret Middle Eastern historical and artistic treasures?
SAMAR: Through what I call ‘quantum heritage’ – my Transcultural Future Ancestors exploration uses advanced computation not just to preserve artifacts but to imagine their uncolonized evolution. From crafting immersive retail experiences to developing cultural strategies at SAMARITUAL, I translate culture into future-facing narratives. My work explores how indigenous concepts might have evolved if their progression hadn’t been interrupted by colonial violence, but instead were remixed, rewilded and subverted through artisanal radical imagination and collective intelligence – think Silk Road 2.0, where knowledge systems flow through digital caravanserais. Whether leading workshops at NYU or mentoring at NEW INC, I’m creating a digital archaeology of possible futures where artistic heritage actively shapes contemporary visual culture. It’s time- travel through algorithms, where past and future collapse into a kaleidoscopic now, and every artifact contains multitudes.
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"title" : "Samar Younes",
"author" : "Samar Younes",
"category" : "interviews",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/global-resistance-art-samar-younes",
"date" : "2025-02-04 15:33:00 -0500",
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"content" : "EIP: When did you first start using AI for your art and what was your introduction? What was your initial inspiration into the AI art world?SAMAR: My embrace of AI emerged from a delicious paradox – physical limitations pushing me toward digital liberation. After years of crafting immersive installations with an almost obsessive tactility, health challenges and breast cancer forced a pivot in my artistic practice, teaching me to find beauty in mutation and imperfection as well as seek new digital artistic expression tools. The emergence of universe-building across physical and digital worlds and Web3 furthered my gravitation toward using AI, transforming it from mere computational tool into a digital djinn. This helped manifest visions my body sometimes couldn’t and introduced a digital sensibility that was missing in a space typically inundated with dystopian aesthetics and Western-centric views of the future. In seeking to transcend corporeal constraints, I discovered a medium that deepened my connection to embodied wisdom and ancestral knowledge systems, creating portals for reimagining cultural futures beyond colonial frameworks.EIP: Did you ever do other forms of artistic expression prior to AI?SAMAR: My practice dissolves disciplinary boundaries, seeing architecture as wearable art, fashion as inhabitable space, and storytelling as architectural form. From ALBA where I studied architecture, interior and visual communication in Beirut to Central Saint Martins where I studied Scenography and Narrative Environments in London, I developed languages for reimagining reality through environments, art, fashion, design and visual storytelling. For over two decades, I’ve transformed retail environments into cultural provocations - from sustainable sculptural interventions spanning 400+ stores worldwide to pioneering omnichannel narratives. As Global Visual Environments Director at Coach and Artistic Display Director at Anthropologie, I centered material manipulation and modular design, the use of recycled materials with an artisanal rigor that challenged luxury’s colonial gaze a decade before sustainability became fashionable. This trajectory from tactile manipulation to AI’s computational flexibility reflects a consistent ethos: challenging systems while amplifying cultural memory and resilience. Now, as Chief Imagination Officer at SAMARITUAL and mentor at NEW INC, I craft brand universes that honor ancestral intelligence while building post-binary futures. AI amplified rather than replaced this trajectory, becoming another strand in my hybrid practice where I leverage deep ethno-aesthetic acumen and artistic direction savoir-faire to merge artisanal intelligence with quantum craft.EIP: How do you program or train AI to avoid cultural insensitivity or misinterpretations of Middle Eastern themes?SAMAR: Rather than viewing AI as a potential threat to cultural authenticity, I see it as a medium for cultural regeneration. Through IMAGINAOLGY, my hybrid future edu lab, I’ve developed methodologies for circumventing AI’s orientalist gaze, deeply dissecting authorship, autonomy, and aesthetic biases. We treat archives not as static repositories but as living media for reimagining futures – where preserving stories becomes as crucial as preserving ecosystems. The goal isn’t to perfect processes but to rewild them, teaching others how to bend these tools away from their embedded biases about the Global South. My methodology creates conditions for cultural innovation rather than imposing limitations, treating computational ethnography as speculative fiction where every generation reinterprets their inheritance without losing its essence.EIP: How can your art medium be used to preserve and reinterpret Middle Eastern historical and artistic treasures?SAMAR: Through what I call ‘quantum heritage’ – my Transcultural Future Ancestors exploration uses advanced computation not just to preserve artifacts but to imagine their uncolonized evolution. From crafting immersive retail experiences to developing cultural strategies at SAMARITUAL, I translate culture into future-facing narratives. My work explores how indigenous concepts might have evolved if their progression hadn’t been interrupted by colonial violence, but instead were remixed, rewilded and subverted through artisanal radical imagination and collective intelligence – think Silk Road 2.0, where knowledge systems flow through digital caravanserais. Whether leading workshops at NYU or mentoring at NEW INC, I’m creating a digital archaeology of possible futures where artistic heritage actively shapes contemporary visual culture. It’s time- travel through algorithms, where past and future collapse into a kaleidoscopic now, and every artifact contains multitudes."
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{
"title" : "Black Liberation Views on Palestine",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/black-liberation-on-palestine",
"date" : "2025-10-17 09:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/mandela-keffiyeh.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "In understanding global politics, it is important to look at Black liberation struggles as one important source of moral perspective. So, when looking at Palestine, we look to Black leaders to see how they perceived the Palestinian struggle in relation to theirs, from the 1960’s to today.Why must we understand where the injustice lies? Because, as Desmond Tutu famously said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”{% for person in site.data.quotes-black-liberation-palestine %}{{ person.name }}{% for quote in person.quotes %}“{{ quote.text }}”{% if quote.source %}— {{ quote.source }}{% endif %}{% endfor %}{% endfor %}"
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{
"title" : "First Anniversary Celebration of EIP",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "events",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/1st-anniversary-of-eip",
"date" : "2025-10-14 18:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/WSA_EIP_Launch_Cover.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent Publishing",
"content" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent PublishingJoin Everything is Political on November 21st for the launch of our End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine.This members-only evening will feature a benefit dinner, cocktails, and live performances in celebration of a year of independent media, critical voices, and collective resistance.The EventNovember 21, 2025, 7-11pmLower Manhattan, New YorkLaunching our End-of-Year Special Edition MagazineSpecial appearances and performancesFood & Drink includedTickets are extremely limited, reserve yours now!Become an annual print member: get x back issues of EIP, receive the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine, and come to the Anniversary Celebration.$470Already a member? Sign in to get your special offer. Buy Ticket $150 Just $50 ! and get the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine Buy ticket $150 and get the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine "
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{
"title" : "Miu Miu Transforms the Apron From Trad Wife to Boss Lady: The sexiest thing in Paris was a work garment",
"author" : "Khaoula Ghanem",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/miu-miu-transforms-the-apron-from-trad-wife-to-boss-lady",
"date" : "2025-10-14 13:05:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_MiuMiu_Apron.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.",
"content" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.From the opening look—German actress Sandra Hüller in a utilitarian deep-blue apron layered over a barn jacket and neat blue shirting—the thesis was loud: the “cover” becomes the thing itself. As silhouettes marched on, aprons multiplied and mutated—industrial drill cotton with front pockets, raw canvas, taffeta and cloqué silk, lace-edged versions that flirted with lingerie, even black leather and crystal-studded incarnations that reframed function as ornament. What the apron traditionally shields (clothes, bodies, “the good dress”) was inverted; the protection became the prized surface. Prada herself spelled it out: “The apron is my favorite piece of clothing… it symbolizes women, from factories through to serving to the home.”Miu Miu Spring 2026 Ready-to-Wear. SuppliedThis inversion matters historically. The apron’s earliest fashion-adjacent life was industrial. It served as a barrier against grease, heat, stain. It was a token of paid and unpaid care. Miu Miu tapped that lineage directly (canvas, work belts, D-ring hardware), then sliced it against domestic codes (florals, ruffles, crochet), and finally pushed into nightlife with bejeweled and leather bibs. The garment’s migration across materials made its social migrations visible. It is a kitchen apron, yes, but also one for labs, hospitals, and factories; the set and styling insisted on that plurality.What makes the apron such a loaded emblem is not just what it covers, but what it reveals about who has always been working. Before industrialization formalized labor into factory shifts and wages, women were already performing invisible labour, the kind that doesn’t exist on payrolls but sits at the foundation of every functioning society. They were cooking, cleaning, raising children, nursing the ill. These tasks were foundational to every economy and yet absent from every ledger. Even when women entered the industrial workforce, from textile plants to wartime assembly lines, their domestic responsibilities did not disappear, they doubled. In that context, the apron here is a quiet manifesto for the strength that goes unrecorded, unthanked, and yet keeps civilization running.The algorithmic rise of the “tradwife,” the influencer economy that packages domesticity as soft power, is the contemporary cultural shadow here. Miu Miu’s apron refuses that rehearsal. In fact, it’s intentionally awkward—oversized, undone, worn over bikinis or with sturdy shoes—so the viewer can’t flatten it into Pinterest-ready nostalgia. Critics noted the collection as a reclamation, a rebuttal to the flattening forces of the feed: the apron as a uniform for endurance rather than submission. The show notes framed it simply as “a consideration of the work of women,” a reminder that the invisible economies of effort—paid, unpaid, emotional—still structure daily life.If that sounds unusually explicit for a luxury runway, consider the designer. Prada trained as a mime at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, earned a PhD in political science, joined the Italian Communist Party, and was active in the women’s rights movement in 1970s Milan. Those facts are not trivia; they are the grammar of her clothes. Decades of “ugly chic” were, essentially, a slow campaign against easy consumption and default beauty. In 2026, the apron becomes the newest dialect. An emblem drawn from leftist feminist history, recoded into a product that still has to sell. That tension—belief versus business—is the Miuccia paradox, and it’s precisely why these aprons read as statements, not trends.The runway narrative traced a journey from function to fetish. Early looks were squarely utilitarian—thick cottons, pocketed bibs—before migrating toward fragility and sparkle. Lace aprons laid transparently over swimmers; crystal-studded aprons slipped across cocktail territory; leather apron-dresses stiffened posture into armor. The sequencing proposed the same silhouette can encode labor, intimacy, and spectacle depending on fabrication. If most brands smuggle “workwear” in as set dressing, Miu Miu forced it onto the body as the central garment and an unmissable reminder that the feminine is often asked to be both shield and display at once.It’s instructive to read this collection against the house’s last mega-viral object: the micro-mini of Spring 2022, a pleated, raw-hem wafer that colonized timelines and magazine covers. That skirt’s thesis was exposure—hip bones and hemlines as post-lockdown spectacle, Y2K nostalgia framed as liberation-lite. The apron, ironically, covers. Where the micro-mini trafficked in the optics of freedom (and the speed of virality), the apron asks about the conditions that make freedom possible: who launders, who cooks, who cares? To move from “look at me” to “who is working here?” is a pivot from optics to ethics, without abandoning desire. (The aprons are, after all, deeply covetable.) In a platform economy that still rewards the shortest hemline with the biggest click-through, this is a sophisticated counter-program.Yet the designer is not romanticizing toil. There’s wit in the ruffles and perversity in the crystals; neither negate labor, they metabolize it. The most striking image is the apron treated as couture-adjacent. Traditionally, an apron protects the precious thing beneath; here, the apron is the precious thing. You could call that hypocrisy—luxurizing the uniform of workers. Or, strategy, insisting that the symbols of care and effort deserve visibility and investment.Of course, none of this exists in a vacuum. The “tradwife” script thrives because it is aesthetically legible and commercially scalable. It packages gender ideology as moodboard. Miu Miu counters with garments whose legibility flickers. The collection’s best looks ask viewers to reconcile tenderness with toughness, convenience with care, which is exactly the mental choreography demanded of women in every context from office to home to online.If you wanted a season-defining “It” item, you’ll still find it. The apron is poised to proliferate across fast-fashion and luxury alike. But the deeper success is structural: Miu Miu re-centered labor as an aesthetic category. That’s rarer than a viral skirt. It’s a reminder that clothes don’t merely decorate life, they describe and negotiate it. In making the apron the subject rather than the prop, Prada turned a garment of service into a platform for agency. It’s precisely the kind of cultural recursion you’d expect from a designer shaped by feminist politics, who never stopped treating fashion as an instrument of thought as much as style.The last image to hold onto is deceptively simple: a woman in an apron, neither fetishized nor infantilized, striding, hands free. Not a costume for nostalgia, not a meme for the feed, but a working uniform reframed, respected, and suddenly, undeniably beautiful. That is Miu Miu’s provocation for Spring 2026: the work behind the work, made visible at last."
}
]
}
