1. Sarah Maple
British artist Sarah Maple’s sleek self-portraits juxtapose confessional audacity with comic, pop-culture quips. They also explicitly confront religious identity. Born in 1985, Maple grew up in Sussex, England. As a child, she drew her own portrait again and again, beginning a trend toward identity-probing that would drive her career as an artist. Raised by a British father and a Kenya-born mother, she and her siblings were brought up as Muslims. She says, “When I was growing up, I always wanted to be more Islamic. And then, when I grew up, I felt like I wasn’t very Islamic at all because of my Western influences.”
2. London's Muslim Girl Power
If you want to see where London’s future lies, look to its Muslim demographic. Today, about 40% of Britain’s Muslim population resides in London, where they make up just below 10% of the residents. And half of the city’s Muslim population is under 24—the youngest age profile in the capital. According to the BBC, over half of all British Muslims were born in the U.K., making this subgroup an increasingly intrinsic part of British society. “We’re the second generation, we’ve grown up here like the kids around us and we haven’t faced the strains most of our elders felt such as not understanding English,” says Warsan Nur, a 19-year-old anthropology student at the University of London, and aspiring journalist. “Racism isn’t so common because people are growing to accept us, so the possibilities for this Muslim generation are endless.”
Even so, young Muslim women, perhaps more than any other population in London, have had to think hard about who they are, and what image they want to project to the rest of the community.
h/t Helen Latifis Small Talk (Danish)
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