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Bahraini visual artist Enas Sistani, who has captured people’s hearts through her powerful photographic works in the past, has this time made a statement using fashion.
Social media followers voiced their approval of the 36-year-old project specialist’s T-shirt and voted it the best Backstreet Boys-inspired top worn at the act’s recent concert in Bahrain.
“Honestly, the whole thing was very last minute,” said the award-winning photographer whose image Disconnected featured at the 49th Annual Fine Arts Exhibition and also won the ‘Honourable Mention’ accolade at the International Photography Awards (IPA) in 2022.
“My colleagues at work, as well as my friends, had meme shirts and I thought how cool it would be to have my own. It was too late to place an order for one so I had to act fast! I came up with the idea of the design while I was about to leave work, created it using a readily available vector art of BSB online and headed to the nearest print shop to get it done, literally half an hour before going to the concert.
“I initially wanted to modify the design by having the BSB members’ donned in thobes and ghutras, but I didn’t have much time to do that so instead I simply went with the literal translation of backstreet boys in Arabic.
“I also initially wanted the translation to be in a Bahraini dialect, but then decided to stick with formal Arabic to reach out to as many of the Arab audience as possible.”
It definitely caught the attention of BSB fans as many clicked pictures of her top to place online or shared her Instagram story on their own feeds, stating that she donned ‘the best’ BSB fashion on the night.
Enas applauds all the others that adorned their own BSB wear.
“Almost all had BSB shirts on and some were custom-made and were pretty creative!” she added. “I didn’t expect it to go viral and for it to be reposted by so many social media accounts. Some even told me I should have made a bunch and sold them pre-concert but, like I said, it was a very last minute thing.”
While Enas hopes to continue to delight her friends with meme-worthy tops in the future, she is currently working on a series of photographs on gender norms as well as thinking of some concepts for short Instagram reels on photography.
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