There is a particular kind of confidence running through Gap Middle East’s new campaign, and it belongs to the six Saudi creatives at the centre of it. Each has built a practice that is recognisably their own: Nouf Alhimiary, Rakan Ghaith, Razan Alsoghayer, Zahra Hussain and the duo Sweam and O.DEE work in different corners of Saudi culture, from installation art and skateboarding to film, music and fashion, bringing their distinct perspectives to the campaign.
That is what Gap set out to capture. Photographed and filmed by CHNDY, with styling by Ali Ammar, the series of portraits and short films takes the cameras straight to the creatives’ world: into the rooms they work in, the routines they keep and the small habits that make up a day. Then each of them was asked the same question. What does self-expression look like from where you stand?
Nouf Alhimiary
Alhimiary’s work has been travelling for more than a decade. Her ‘What She Wore’ series, featuring Saudi women photographed in identical abayas in different settings, was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2013. Recently, she completed a PhD at University College London exploring how memory is carried through digital life. Her installations and multimedia projects, as she puts it in the film, offer a way of reflecting on how we remember the past and stay tethered to the world around us. When the subject turns to confidence, though, she goes somewhere more physical. For her, it is sensory: textures she finds comforting, colours that make the world feel beautiful, the small imaginative pockets she builds into her days. ‘Going into fantasy, I feel like I find a very authentic version of myself,’ she says.
Rakan Ghaith
Ghaith is a founding member of Sandlifers, the Riyadh skate collective that came together in 2020, just after the city opened its first official skate park. It started as a group of friends posting the clips they had been filming of each other and has grown into a crew of around a dozen skaters from Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Eritrea and Yemen, with Ghaith competing internationally under the Saudi flag. In his film he goes back to the start of all that: the moment the board touches the ground, he says, is the moment he feels free. What drives him is competition, and he admits he loves it almost too much. He turns that competitive instinct inward. ‘I compete with myself. I compete with my own mind,’ he says, and the rule he has set for himself is blunt: even if he falls, even if it hurts, he has to land the trick.
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Razan Alsoghayer
Alsoghayer has been making films since she was nine, when she started shooting and editing on her phone. The training came later, at La Fémis in Paris and the National Film and Television School in the UK, and the results have travelled: ‘Breath’ screened at the Red Sea International Film Festival, ‘The Day I Lost Myself’ is on Netflix MENA, and her latest short, ‘The Last Cigarette’, was shot on 35mm in Italy. Her segment is built around the things she refuses to let go of. There is the first VHS camera she owned, on which every one of her home videos was shot, and the bedtime stories her parents read to her as a child, which she memorised line by line and still keeps close. That same instinct, keep what is yours and let it make you feel at home, runs through the way she dresses. ‘The more comfortable I dress, the more I feel like myself,’ she says.
Sweam and O.DEE
Sweam, a producer, and O.DEE, a singer, are a duo from Jeddah, and the ease between them is the first thing you notice on camera. Their partnership, they say, never felt forced, not from day one, and their working method is simple. ‘Authenticity to me is whatever comes out on the first attempt,’ one of them says. ‘Music changed a lot in my life’, he adds, which is why he intends to keep making it forever, and why he has learned not to doubt himself. If it does not happen today, it happens tomorrow.
Zahra Hussain
Hussain grew up in rural England as a Saudi and was studying finance when she was scouted. She walked into an agency on a whim and was signed immediately. International campaigns and editorials have followed, but in her film she is less interested in the career than in what it stands for. ‘I get to represent where I’m from, my background, my heritage,’ she says, always reminded of the girls who look like her. Her definition of authenticity is straightforward, and useful: whatever genuinely makes you happy. Find your interests, find your people, follow your gut.
Behind the camera
Creative director CHNDY shot the series with the contrast he is known for, setting the polished against the raw: clean denim inside real skate parks, studios and edit suites. Ali Ammar’s styling keeps it that way, with the clothes sitting inside each world rather than on top of it.
The portraits and films are live now on @gapmiddleeast and at gap.ae, gap.sa and gap.com.kw.
