Myriam Boulos

Btihal Remli

Myriam Boulos: Sunday Companionship, celebration and sisterhood

Based in Beirut, Lebanese photographer Myriam Boulos uses her camera to understand her city, its people and her place among them. Her work in photography typically engages with recurrent themes and subject matter. Through her images, Boulos reveals her continuous interest in the representation of women and minorities, and the experience of subcultures existing on the social fringes of Beirut. The artist also tends to work in a photographic approach that is distinctive and aesthetically bold.

These motifs are exemplified in the series Sunday, which follows domestic workers from Ethiopia, Madagascar, Sri-Lanka and the Philippines on their only day off, Sunday. For a few hours on a Sunday, the presence of these domestic workers in Beirut is visible, and in certain neighbourhoods the atmosphere is briefly but noticeably changed. “I always saw them as representatives of both social and political struggles. I wanted to photograph them outside their work, as women, and not as ‘cleaning women’ as they are so often referred to by my fellow citizens in Lebanon.”

For the creation of Sunday, Boulos takes an interest in these women as they enjoy their free time, and documents the places they go to escape the everyday reality of the Kafala system.

‘Kafala’ means sponsor in Arabic. It is a system used in the Gulf region and the Middle East to manage migrant workers. Every migrant domestic worker is required to have a sponsor to legally live in Lebanon. Under the Kafala system, a domestic worker cannot leave their job, resign or leave the country without their sponsor’s permission. Questioning the terms of their contract means risking deportation. As a result, the Kafala system perpetuates situations of abuse and exploitation. Boulos’s series Sunday seeks to liberate these women from the labeling and oppression imposed on them by the Kafala system, by capturing them in the few hours of freedom they enjoy each week - those brief yet precious moments in which they can be themselves.

Domestic workers are typically expected to be seen and not heard. They are the figures that tiptoe in the background as they tend to the lives of the ‘more elite.’ But in the making of Sunday, Boulos draws our attention to these women and acknowledges them as the focus of her artistic vision.

The images composing Sunday are bold and colourful. Boulos works in a distinct photographic style combining high contrast, sharp focus and dynamic compositions. The aesthetic emphasizes the joyous nature of these weekly meetings between workers. Scenes of women dancing, worshipping and gathering outside are rendered in vibrant colours, giving the images a playful and positive quality, and highlighting the values of companionship, celebration and sisterhood that are at the core of each worker’s Sunday experience.

Boulos often uses her camera as a tool for engaging in social and political dialogue, a common thread found throughout her photography practise. Sunday

I always saw them as representatives of both social and political struggles. I wanted to photograph them outside their work, as women, and not as ‘cleaning women’

documents one day in the lives of foreign domestic workers employed under Beirut’s Kafala system, and therefore by default the series comments on the injustice, discrimination and exploitation that remain prevalent in the city’s social and political structures today. But more accurately Sunday is a series about community and triumph over oppression. Gathering in laughter and celebration, the women of Sunday are captured by Boulos in moments of bliss and belonging as they rise above their circumstances and forget, for a day, that they are anything but free.

Sunday Lebanon, Harissa from the series Kafala system (2015)