Shahrazad
From ‘Wait...what are you?’ series
In the “Wait...what are you?” series (a question all too familiar to mixed race people), I am making sense of intersecting influences that have led me to hate the word ‘exotic’ and resent the experience of being a woman for a good portion of my life. I re-examine female characters from stories I passively internalized in childhood. These womens’ individual voices and feelings were not included in the stories I heard growing up –only the actions of people/gods in positions of power over them. In this series, I undertake giving their perspectives authority.
For this 6ft piece, I focus on Shahrazad, the main character and narrator of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights). This collection of stories began in India and picked up more stories as it traveled over to the Levant and Lebanon, where my mom’s family is from, and across to Egypt, over centuries.
In it, a sultan finds his wife has been cheating on him. He has her beheaded and vows to marry and behead a new virgin by morning each day. Eventually, Shahrazad is selected. With her sister’s help, she tells the sultan a different story every night, leaving him on a cliffhanger each morning, escaping death for 1000 nights. On the 1001st night, the king decides to not kill her and keeps her as his consort.
I want to not only call on Middle Eastern (MENAP), Greek mythological, and Pacific Northwestern symbolism for their direct cultural meanings, but to also center the thousands of women’s voices that came before mine - many that were silent or silenced throughout history and today. It is important for me to remove
the passive acceptance of accessible exoticism and redefine being a mixed race woman who is white- adjacent.
Nikki Jabbora - Barber
Nikki Jabbora - Barber, Seattle-based printmaker and teaching artist, was born in Bellingham, WA to an Anglo-Swedish father and Lebanese mother. She focuses on the way people communicate feelings, culture cues, and emotional safety through botanical symbols and depictions of flora and fauna. She graduated from the University of Washington with an Interdisciplinary Visual Arts degree with a focus in printmaking and a separate Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Sciences. She primarily teaches printmaking at Pratt Fine Art Center, Seattle Artist League, Pilchuck Glass School, and other art schools in the Seattle area. She is represented by MESH Fine Art in Chicago, IL.