{ "article": { "title" : "Sarah Elawad", "author" : "Sarah Elawad", "category" : "interviews", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/global-resistance-art-sarah-elawad", "date" : "2025-02-04 15:33:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/sarah-elawad-1.jpg", "excerpt" : "", "content" : "EIP: How would you describe your artwork, and what led you to explore this particular form of expression? Did it involve a lot of experimentation?SARAH: I like to describe my work as joyful or a big hug. My work definitely holds a lot of meaning and purpose to me in other ways, but ultimately, the reason I put most of it out into the world, is to spread positivity and celebrate love.Having learnt Graphic Design within a western lens whilst living in the Middle East, I was particularly drawn towards imagery around me and online that I thought were beautiful and endearing but went against a lot of the western design rules for “good design”. Good morning WhatsApp images are just one example of that, and one of my favourites. This led me to question what “good design” really was and whether these standards held by the western design world were worth sticking to. I was determined to break all the rules I learnt and to do so by drawing inspiration from the imagery I was surrounded by, grew up with and received from loved ones online.My work did involve a lot of experimentation at the beginning of my creative journey which is what led to me figuring out my style and gaining the confidence to be more bold in my design choices.EIP: In what ways does your art reflect your Sudanese heritage, and why is that connection meaningful to you?SARAH: The main way that my art reflects my Sudanese heritage is that I am Sudanese and I am making the artwork. There are some pieces I have made that directly highlight my Sudanese identity but to me, every piece is connected to my heritage because I am the outcome of generations of Sudanese people and everything I do will always reflect parts of that.The connection to my heritage has always been important to me because it’s who I am, but it has also become even more important in recent times given the killing and displacement of so many Sudanese people and the attempt to erase family history and culture. Now, more than ever, it is so important for me to highlight my Sudanese identity and heritage in everything I do.EIP: Out of everything you’ve created, which art piece holds the most memorable place in your heart?SARAH: The zine I designed in 2023 titled: ‘in the bloom of their joy and the flower of their happiness’ is one I hold quite close to my heart. It’s an accumulation of research Idid surrounding beauty and love within an islamic and Arab philosophical context, as well as various artwork I made during that period of time. I feel like it’s really an embodiment of so many things I believe in, in an almost solely visual format.The cover of the zine is made up of a puffy sticker sheet of WhatsApp stickers my mother sent me, and the insides are 4 colour risograph printed pages each of which display a piece of art work or phrase developed in my research that holds meaning to me. It is such a personal project, and I never imagined it to be received as well as it was, reminding me just how important it is as an artist to be vulnerable with your audience.EIP: You mention belief in the divine as an influence. How does this manifest in your work—subtly or overtly?SARAH: My work is often about demonstrating manifestations of love and one part of Islamic art and architecture that has always fascinated me is how maximalism and grandeur is used to demonstrate an infinite love for the divine, this is also the driving force for a lot of my own maximalist artwork.I also have a deep desire to create beauty with my artwork whilst also challenging what our standards of beauty are. There’s a famous quote in the Islamic tradition that says “Allah (God) is beauty and loves all things beautiful”. Within an Islamic philosophical point of view, beauty could be defined by many different things - love between two people, the reflection of the self in an object, remembrance of god, etc. But one that has always particularly interested me is the imitation of nature. Ibn Rushd (Averroes), a polymath from the Andalusia, held the opinion that art could never compete with the beauty of nature, but that it could perhaps come close and that “…the nobility of the artist will depend on the degree of excellence with which he imitates nature…” Although a lot of my work is digital or abstract, most of where I draw my own inspiration draws its inspiration from nature: roses, doves, pearls, plants, bright colours, etc. One way to glorify the divine is to amplify the beauty in creation, and I hope to do some of that with some of the work I make.EIP: What is your first memory of digital nostalgia for you personally and what was your connection to that?SARAH: It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly which one was the first, but I do remember when WhatsApp first introduced the sticker feature on chats, because it totally changed the game for sharing digital nostalgia. The most memorable of those would all be from my parents, I love them (and the stickers!)." } , "relatedposts": [ { "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 %}" } , { "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 " } , { "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." } ] }