CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/17/2026

Spoonbill Books presents 'Aisha' author Yumna Al-Arashi in conversation with Céline Semaan

Friday, April 17, from 6–8 PM, Spoonbill Books presents Arab-American photographer and filmmaker Yumna Al-Arashi in conversation with Lebanese-Canadian designer, writer, speaker and advocate Céline Semaan in celebration of Al-Arashi's recent photography book, Aisha, published by Edition Patrick Frey.

This is the first artist’s book of Yemeni-Egyptian American photographer and filmmaker Yumna Al-Arashi (born 1988). Inspired by Al-Arashi’s great-grandmother, Aisha, the book is a homage to the lineage of women from the many-layered landscapes of the MENA region. Searching for an understanding of the tattoos that graced her great-grandmother’s body, Al-Arashi embraces the complexities of a symbolic matriarchal tradition. Unable to visit one of her places of origin, the war-stricken Yemen, Al-Arashi traveled through Northern Africa, where she met and photographed a diverse group of women belonging more or less to the same generation. By refusing the violence of selection and definition surrounding women’s practices, Al-Arashi publishes every single photograph from her journey in this 392 page monograph, moving the work into an ethereal cinematic celebration.

Aisha includes Al-Arashi’s prose and poetry in which she reflects on memories of her great-grandmother. In her genre-stretching texts, Al-Arashi also speaks on colonial archives, intergenerational storytelling and the complexities of transnational female Arab identity in patriarchal, capitalist and imperialist societies.

Spoonbill Books
Yumna Al-Arashi and Céline Semaan on 'Aisha'
Friday, April 17, 6–8 PM
218 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11249